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It is hardly necessary for me to indicate the head, body, wings, and legs of the smaller figure, for they are evidently avian, while the character of the beak would indicate that a parrot or raptorial genus was intended. The same beak is found in the decoration of a vase with a bird design, which will later be considered.
A majority of raptorial insects are, however, nocturnal, and from all these enemies that go about under cover of night, the firefly, as Kirby and Spence rightly conjectured, protects itself, or rather is involuntarily protected, by means of its frequent flashing light.
With the child I knew best it urged him on and infected me with world-hunger and roused activities. For the opinion is rooted deep in many minds that to surrender one's wings, to clip one's claws, to put a cork in one's raptorial beak, and masquerade in a commercial barnyard, is to be a very fine fowl indeed.
Through these a raptorial stream pours in such numbers during the period of migration that a person with a foreknowledge of their path in former years may lie in wait and watch scores upon scores of these birds pass close overhead within a few hours, while a short distance to the right or left one may watch all day without seeing a single raptor. The whims of migrating birds are beyond our ken.
Again: "Naked I stood upon the raked arena Beneath the pennants of Vespasian, While seried thousands gazed strangers from Caucasus, Men of the Grecian Isles, and Barbary princes, To see me grapple with the counterpart Of that I had been the raptorial jaws, The arms that wont to crush with strength alone, The eyes that glared vindictive.
After this the different needs of the offspring of such an insect, with their different modes of taking food, vegetable or animal, would induce the diverse forms of simple, or raptorial, or leaping or digging limbs. With use, as in the case of legs, these originally soft mouth-feet would gradually harden at the extremities, until serviceable in biting, when they would become jaws and palpi.
This is the case with the large compound eyes, with the structure of the heart, with the raptorial feet in Squilla, and with the powerful, muscular, straightly-extended abdomen in Palaemon, Alpheus, Hippolyte, and the Hermit Crabs. It is the case, lastly, with the conversion of the two anterior pairs of limbs into antennae.
By bringing a raptorial insect and a firefly together, we find that the flashing light of the latter does actually scare away the former, and is therefore, for the moment, a protection as effectual as the camp-fire the traveller lights in a district abounding with beasts of prey.
The same is true of the raptorial birds, or birds of prey, which are strong perchers and depend largely for their food supply on clutching their victims while on the wing. In all these birds the hind toe is also well developed, and is on the same plane as the anterior digits a wise adaptation of means to ends.
The middle of this compound figure is decorated with a cross, and in each quadrant there is a row of the same emblems, equidistant from one another. It would be but a short step from this figure to the ancient sun symbol with which the eagle and other raptorial birds are intimately associated.
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