46 NORTH AMERICAN OOLOGY. PART I. 



for purposes of anatomical examination, by being let down into a vat highly charged 

 with carbonic acid gas. Its occurrence, however, near the sea-coast is very rare, and 

 even among the mountains it is never found except in occasional pairs. It breeds 

 in the mountainous portions of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and New York, 

 and was formerly not unfrequent among the cliffs of the Hudson River. Steamboats 

 and railroads have, however, nearly driven this wild bird from its romantic retreats 

 in that quarter. In Franconia. N. H., for quite a number of years a pair have oc- 

 cupied a nest on an inaccessible rock, near the top of a mountain, in sight of, and 

 opposite, the Flume House. Repeated efforts have been made to reach its nest, but 

 thus far without success. In the summer of 1855 a renewed attempt was made to 

 scale the precipice over which the shelving rock, on which the nest stands, projects. 

 A party was formed, and although they succeeded in ascending the mountain, which 

 had never been achieved before, they could reach only a point beyond and above, 

 not the nest itself. The attempt to pass to it was abandoned, being regarded as 

 too perilous. The party reported a large collection of bones in its immediate vi- 

 cinity, with other evidences of the accumulated plunder of many years, as well as 

 a plentiful supply of fresh food at the time visited. 



The Golden Eagle usually constructs its nest on the sides of steep, rocky crags, 

 where its materials are coarsely heaped together on a projecting shelf of rock. These 

 consist of large sticks, loosely arranged. In rare instances they are said to have 

 been built on trees in the Western States, where rocky cliffs are not to be met with. 

 The eggs are usually three in number ; sometimes two, or only one. Mr. Audubon 

 describes them as measuring 3.} inches in length by 2} in breadth; the shell thick 

 and smooth, dull white, brushed over with undefined patches of brown, which are 

 most numerous at the larger end. This description is probably not quite accurate in 

 regard to size. The European is presumed to be larger than the American, yet the 

 largest I have ever seen measures but 3^ inches in length by 2j 5 ^ in breadth. The 

 one represented in the drawing referred to measured 3 T \ inches in length by 2 T 4 g 

 inches in breadth. It was in its shape more elongate than the European egg, and 

 its capacity considerably less than any I have met with. The markings differ in their 

 color from those of well-marked specimens of the European, the latter being of a much 

 more reddish shade of brown. Another European egg in the British Museum, and 

 also one represented in Hewitson's British Oology, which closely resembled it, were 

 marked over the entire surface with small but distinct blotches of reddish-brown 

 on a white ground. One in my collection, taken in Scotland, and presented me 

 by H. F. Walter, Esq. of London, is nearly unmarked. A distinctly bluish-white 

 ground is faintly stained with a few very obscure markings of slate and purplish- 

 brown. More information in regard to the variations of both the American and the 

 European eggs, and the degree of uniformity of these variations, is needed, before 

 they can help to throw any sure light upon their specific identity or diversity. 



