WHITE-TAILED EAGLE. 27 



SO lately as 1780, as well as the uest which Dr. Moore men- 

 tions as having formerly existed on Dewerstone Rock, near 

 Dartmoor. Willughby speaks of an eyry, certainly a Sea- 

 Eagle's, in Whinfield Park, Westmoreland, and in 1692 

 Aubrey was told that Eagles "do breed in the parish of 

 Brampton," in the same county. Dr. Heysham, in Hutchin- 

 son's ' Cumberland,' published in 1794, says that in his 

 day this species bred almost every year near Keswick and 

 Ullswater, and in that district, in July, 1835, Mr. Thomp- 

 son says he saw two Eagles on the same day. Mr. A. G. 

 More, whose elaborate papers (in ' The Ibis ' for 1865), on 

 the "Distribution of Birds in Great Britain," are full of 

 original information on that interesting subject, learnt from 

 Mr. Crellin that a pair of Eagles used to breed in the high 

 clifts of the Isle of Man until about fifty years previously, 

 when they were destroyed in a snow-storm. 



In the South of Scotland the Sea-Eagle used to breed in 

 Dumfriesshire and East Galloway, on Ailsa Crag in the west, 

 and on the Bass Eock in the east, but it seems now to be 

 quite extirpated from those localities, though still found 

 breeding in the Highlands and Islands, its eyry being com- 

 monly placed in the high cliffs of the coast ; but when it 

 establishes itself inland, it is generally upon a rock or 

 island in the middle of a lake. '• Here it builds," says 

 Wolley, " upon the ground or in a tree, a nest whose con- 

 struction does not at all differ from that of the Golden Eagle, 

 there being always in it a certain amount of Luzula sylvatlca. 

 The tree need by no means be a large one : I have seen two 

 nests of different years, in separate islands in one loch, each 

 only about four feet from the ground, in very small trees." 

 This accurate observer adds, from his own experience in the 

 Highlands, Orkneys and Shetlands, a great number of 

 further particulars respecting the many nests that came 

 under his notice, which may be found at length in the 

 ' Ootheca Wolleyana,' but cannot be conveniently quoted 

 here. Mr. Eobert Gray also, in his * Birds of the West of 

 Scotland,' gives many more interesting details of numerous 

 eyries in the Hebrides, as well as on the mainland, carefully 



