CHAPTER X THE HAWK "Doth the hawk soar by thy wisdom?" was one of the confounding questions hurled at Job in his great thirtyninth chapter, that contains so much natural history. His reply was not ready, and nearly six thousand years later the question remains unanswered. The greatest thing any of us have learned concerning the flight of the hawk, or any bird, is that it depends on balance. To mount above cloud, to soar, to sail, to poise hanging in air as does the hawk, is possible only when the bird balances perfectly. Two primary feathers lost from the tip of one wing, and these powers of flight are gone. How many ages and what slowly evolving chains of circumstances were required to lift a serpent from the sea, cover it with great feathers, and set it sailing out of the range of our vision, only the Almighty can tell: Job knew no more about it than we. Many members of any one of two families might have been intended by this question. If it referred to the wonderful power of flight of the hawk, how she stretched her wings toward the south, and sailed directly into the eye of the sun until men could not follow her for blinding their vision, it might have meant any great-winged hawk of strong flight. Birds such as we think of when we remember Cooper's hawk, or any relative of its size. But if "stretching her wings toward the south" re |