Phoenix Or Eagle, Which?

On the left is the bird’s head from the first Great Seal of the United States (1782) and on the right the Great Seal of 1902. When the first Great Seal was actually cut, the bird represented upon it was very different from the eagle which now appears: the neck was much longer and the tuft of feathers at the upper back part of the head was quite noticeable; the beak bore little resemblance to that of the eagle; and the entire bird was much thinner and its wings shorter. It requires very little imagination to trace in this first so-called eagle the mythological phoenix of antiquity. What is more, there is every reason why a phoenix bird should be used to represent a new country rising out of an old, while as Benjamin Franklin caustically noted, the eagle was not even a bird of good moral character! MPH
 

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