174 



EAGLE 



inci'eased of late years than diminished ; for the foresters and shep- 

 herds, finding that a high price can be got for their eggs, take care 

 to protect the owners of the eyries, which are nearly all well 

 known, and to keep up the stock by alloAving them at times to rear 

 their young. There are also now not a few occupiers of Scottish 

 forests who interfere so far as they can to protect the " king of 

 birds." But hardly thirty years ago resort Avas had without stint 

 to trapping, poisoning, and other destructive devices, and there 



Sea-Eagle. (After Wolf.) 



was then every probability that before long not an Eagle of any 

 kind would be left to add the wild majesty of its appearance to 

 the associations of the mountain, the cliff, or the lake.-*^ In Ireland 



^ The late Lord Breadalbane (John, 2nd Marquess of the first creation, and 

 5th Earl) Avho died in 1862, was perhaps the fir.st large landowner who set the 

 example that has been since followed by others. On his unrivalled forest of 

 Black Mount, Eagles — elsew^here persecuted to the death — were by him ordered 

 to be unmolested so long as they were not numerous enough to cause consider- 

 able depredations on the farmers' flocks. He thought, and all who have an eye 

 for the harmonies of nature will agree with him, that the spectacle of a soaring 



