National Affairs: Feet of a Duck

Patriots boiled last week over a stricture passed by Captain Charles W. R. Knight, British ornithologist. Captain Knight had been making money in the U. S. with a cinema-and-lecture on eagles. Scrutinizing a U. S. coin he had observed that the bald-headed or American eagle depicted thereon was “just taking off instead of in full flight.”

He said: “When the American eagle has gained its ascendancy, as your great country has, its talons are tucked up underneath its body and not stretched out like a duck’s feet. It is the symbol of might and dignity and yet the designer has given the grand old bird the feet of a duck.”

Patriots boiled, not at politely perspicacious Ornithologist Knight, but at poetically licentious Hermon MacNeil, designer of the eagle which has been stamped on U. S. quarter-dollars since 1916. “Feet of a duck!” patriots muttered. “Designer MacNeil should be shown a flying eagle and made to try again!”