i 4 BIRD-HUNTING 



experience ; while the White-tailed Eagle is now 

 but seldom met with. 



It would therefore be better for any one who is 

 desirous of having something more than a chance 

 sight of a passing Eagle to travel to a land where 

 the preservation of game is not so rigorously carried 

 out, where the noblest forms of animal life are not 

 yet mercilessly exterminated as vermin, and where 

 the balance of Nature is the only factor in the 

 abundance or scarcity of any species. 



Luckily, it is not necessary to travel very far. 

 Twenty-four hours will bring one to the Spanish 

 frontier, and in Spain the present fauna is something 

 like that which existed in England some four or five 

 hundred years ago. There the wolves still take toll 

 of the flocks and herds during the winter, and, not 

 content with the sheep, occasionally devour the 

 shepherd as well. The Brown Bear and the Lynx 

 still exist in certain parts, the former in the north, 

 the latter, with the Wild Boar, in the tangled thickets 

 and wooded solitudes of the south. The Eagles 

 breed in security in the rocky heights of the sierras, 

 and in the immense pine-forests and cork-woods. 

 The Griffon Vulture and the Egyptian Vulture nest 

 in the precipitous heights of the sierras, and the rare 

 Lammergeier, now almost extinct in Europe, still 

 exists in greatly diminished numbers in the most 

 remote and inaccessible parts of the mountains. 



