AQUILA CHRYSAETUS. 15 



Highland stories ! Is not the vahie of a few lambs and fawns a 

 cheap price to pay for its preservation ? for it is only here and there 

 that an Eagle is not contented with Hares^ and sometimes a Grouse 

 or a Ptarmigan : just as with Foxes, it is but a few individuals that 

 bring the bad name on all their race. But if it be too late, as I fear 

 it is, to hope for the Eagle's prolonged existence in Scotland, now 

 that the railways tie London to the Grampians, and the salmon- 

 fisher, the grouse-shooter, and the skin-collector, as well as the sheep- 

 farmer, all give great rewards for its destruction, we may still go 

 to see it in foreign lands, and we must try to console ourselves with 

 the utilitarian reflection that the number of destructive animals in a 

 country is the measure of that country's civilization ! ^ 



§ 25. T'z^-o.— Siitherlandshire, 24 April, 1848. Erom Mr. W. 

 Dunbar's Collection. 



Of these beautiful and highly-marked eggs, Mr. Dunbar says in 

 his letter dated 21st June, 1848, " The Golden Eagle's eggs are both 

 from the same nest. The eggs were two in number. The nest was 

 placed in a rock about two hundred feet high, in Sutherland. The 

 nest was about eighty feet from the bottom of the rock, and com- 

 posed of large sticks and stumps of strong heather, with moss. The 

 old bird, a female, was shot ; I have her now preserved, and she is a 

 very fine specimen." 



The following year I heard that the nest in which these eggs were 

 was easily accessible, on the east side of the mountain. 



Further particulars respecting the locality whence these eggs came 

 are given by Mr. Scrope in his ' Art of Deer-stalking,' p. 365. 



^ [The foregoing paragi-aphs were -RTitten by Mr. "Wolley in the spring of 1853, 

 for the use of Mr. Hewitson, who was then preparing the third edition of his well- 

 known ' Eggs of British Birds.' A slightly modified version of them was accord- 

 ingly communicated to that gentleman, and he has given copious extracts from it 

 {op. cit. pp. 10-13). I have here introduced the notes from the original manu- 

 script now in my possession. Some verbal discrepancies are consequently ob- 

 servable between the two accounts ; but these are so unimportant that I do not 

 think it necessary to reprint the passage from Mr. Flewitsou's pages, though he 

 has most kindly given me permission to quote in this book all the information 

 furnished to his last edition by Mr. Wolley, — a favom* of which I shall not be slow 

 to avail myself in most cases. It must be remembered that these notes contain 

 the general results of their author's experience only up to the time above-mentioned. 

 A more extended knowledge of the habits of the Golden Eagle, especially as regards 

 its nidification in trees, in some points altered Mr. WoUey's opinion ; and a case of 

 fmir eggs being found in a nest has been recorded by Capt. Orde (Ibis, 1861, 

 p. 112.— Ed.] 



