ACCIPITRINE) or RAPACIOUS BIRDS.
The birds belonging to this division are at once distin guished by their hooked bill and claws, the width of their nostrils, the largeness of their head, the strength of their muscles, their piercing vision, and their power of elevated flight. Their stomach is somewhat analogous to that of carnivorous quadrupeds ; but its cavity is more a con tinuation of the (esophagus, and the solvent glands are more numerous and conspicuous. The cardiac portion of their stomach is also very distinct from the pyloric.
Rapacious birds are naturally addicted to pursue their prey, and to feed on raw flesh. They lead a roaming and solitary life, generally associating only in pairs, affecting sequestered mountains, or deserted rocks, in the crevices of wbich, or on the tops of the loftiest trees, they build their nests. Though less fertile than most of the other families, Linne and Temminck have too rashly asserted, that they lay no more than four eggs at a time ; for the number has been known to vary from one to seven. Their harsh, unsocial, and even ferocious dispositions, seem to be the unavoidable result of those constitutional propel, cities by which they are impelled to rapine and slaughter, in order to gratify the cravings of appetite. Their de predations are less extensive on the land than on the waters ; but, as in no country the water animals are wholly protected from their ravages, and as their own car casses afford no salutary food to man, they have been re gardcd as nuisances by the thoughtless, and even by those accustomed to reflection. Yet a very ordinary degree of discernment may suffice to convince us, that the multi tudes of animals which fall victims to their more powerful assailants, are absolved from the protracted torments of age, or lingering disease ; that the balance of the races on which the welfare and comfort of all living beings depend, could not be maintained if the predacious tribes were ex terminated ; that the produce of our fields would be de voured by vermin, and that the air would be tainted with pestilence and death.
The extrication of the species of this order is involved in considerable obscurity, both because the individuals which compose them frequent remote or inaccessible re treats, and because they are liable to more remarkable changes alter the first three moultings than most birds of the other orders. They have generally been divided into the diurnal and nocturnal, the former hunting for their food during the day, and the latter during the night.
The diurnal birds of prey have the eyes situated on the sides of the head ; the cere covering the base of the beak; three toes before, and a featherless one behind, the two exterior almost always united at their base by a short membrane ; the plumage closely arranged ; the quill feathers strong; the stomach, with few exceptions, mem branous; the intestines of moderate dimensions ; the cecum, or blind gut, particularly short; the sternum, or breast bone, large, and completely ossified, to afford more extensive attachments to the muscles of the wings ; and the forking semicurcular, and very wide, in order to resist the violent depressions of the humerus in rapid flight.