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THE EAGLE STONE. 345
sight
is not rebounded again by clearness of the light of the sun, neither
disperpled. There is one manner of eagle that is full sharp of sight;
and she taketh her own birds in her claws, and maketh them to look even
on the sun, and that ere their wings be full grown ; and except they
look stiffly, and stedfastly against the sun, she beateth them, and
setteth them even before the sun. And if any eye of any of her birds
watereth in looking on the sun, she slayeth him, as though he went out
of kind, or else driveth him out of the nest, and despiseth him, and
setteth not by him."
The Eagle Stone is a natural concretion, a variety of argillaceous oxide of iron.
The
Imperial Eagle of ancient Rome,—symbol of its lofty power,— being on
one memorable occasion threatened in the Capitol with stealthy assault
by invasion, was saved by the timely cackling of geese, (birds the
intelligence of which is much under-rated). After the same fashion (as
a well-known fable relates), the lion, king of beasts, was rescued from
the toils of the hunter, in which he had become entrapped, by the
humble nibblings of a small mouse at the meshes of the hostile net,
until a rift large enough to allow of escape had thus become helpfully
made.
As to the domestic Goose, (in Latin, anser), a
modern anecdote tells that when the Bursar of Worcester College,
Oxford, 1850, was ruffled in temper by his futile endeavours at table
to carve a very tough bird of this kind, he passed off his irritation
by making a Latin joke—"'tis only a soft 'anser' that turneth away
wrath."
Marbodus has said, in classical terms, about the Eagle Stone :—
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