e hanimals in this
country_?" Loud cries of Oh! oh! oh! No doubt an eagle is an animal;
like Mr Cobbett or Mr O'Connell--"a very fine animal;" but we
particularly, and earnestly, and anxiously, request Sir Humphry Davy
not to call her so again--but to use the term bird, or any other term he
chooses, except animal. Animal, a living creature, is too general, too
vague by far; and somehow or other it offends our ear shockingly when
applied to an eagle. We may be wrong, but in a trifling matter of this
kind Sir Humphry surely will not refuse our supplication. Let him call a
horse an animal, if he chooses--or an ass--or a cow--but not an
eagle--as he loves us, not an eagle; let him call it a bird--the Bird of
Jove--the Queen or King of the Sky--or anything else he chooses--but not
an animal--no--no--no--not an animal, as he hopes to prosper, to be
praised in Maga, embalmed and immortalised.

Neither ought Poietes to have asked if there were "_many_ of these
animals" in this country. He ought to have known that there are not
_many_ of these animals in any country. Eagles are proud--apt to hold
their heads very high--and to make themselves scarce. A great many
eagles all flying about together would look most absurd. They are aware
of that, and fly in "ones and twos"--a couple perhaps to a county.
Poietes might as well have asked Mungo Park if there were a great many
lions in Africa. Mungo, we think, saw but one; and that was one too
much. There were probably a few more between Sego and Timbuctoo--but
there are not a "great many of those animals in that country"--though
quite sufficient for the purpose. How the Romans contrived to get at
hundreds for a single show, perplexes our power of conjecture.

Halieus says--with a smile on his lip surely--in answer to the query of
Poietes--"Of this species I have seen but these two; and, I believe, the
young ones migrate as soon as they can provide for themselves; for this
solitary bird requires a large space to move and feed in, and does not
allow its offspring to partake its reign, or to live near it." This is
all pretty true, and known to every child rising or risen six, except
poor Poietes. He had imagined that there were "many of these animals in
this country," that they all went a-fishing together as amicably as five
hundred sail of Manksmen among a shoal of herrings.

Throughout these Dialogues we have observed that Ornither rarely opens
his mouth. Why so taciturn? On the subjec