THE GOLDEN EAGLE 3 



an hour, without any perceptible motion of the wings. 

 Since then I have often watched the Black Eagle wrestling 

 with the storm, and certainly he is at his best during a day 

 of wild gales and driving showers of rain and sleet. It 

 is on occasions such as these that the King of Birds appears 

 to take delight in pitting his great strength against that 

 of the storm, and, no matter how wild the hurricane, he 

 seems to revel in soaring, grim and inscrutable, in the 

 teeth of the tempest. One such October day I watched 

 him for a while. A westerly gale swept the hills, and so 

 tremendous was the current of air that it was only with 

 difficulty I made my way up the glen. To my right the 

 hillside rose sharp and steep, to a height of nearly 4000 

 feet, and when first I saw the eagle he was soaring almost 

 motionless against the gale. But after a time, as if in 

 play, the great bird, leaning on the wind, lifted himself 

 somewhat and then, tightly folding his wings, dropped 

 like a stone till he had descended to his former level. And 

 so, rising and falling alternately, the black eagle revelled 

 in the gale and in his great command of flight. The next 

 day I was again on the high hills. The westerly wind still 

 blew, but winter had descended on the corries during the 

 hours of night, and at intervals blizzards of dry powdery 

 snow were swept down the glen, making one seek shelter 

 for the time being behind the nearest rock. During the 

 height of one such squall an eagle crossed the hill-face. 

 Flying in the teeth of the storm, with only an occasional 

 movement of his wings to propel him, the king of the hills 

 moved quickly forward, though by what method he pro- 

 tected his eyes from the blinding snow I cannot say. It 

 may well be that the eagle has the power of drawing 

 across his eye the " third eyelid " on such occasions. 



This third eyelid, or Nictitating Membrane, to give it its 

 more scientific title, is a more or less transparent layer of 

 skin which can be moved across the eye in a horizontal 



