AQUILA CHRYSAETUS. 9 



only by the individual exertions of the large sheep-farmers, who 

 generally gave five shillings for each egg or young one, and ten shillings 

 for every old bird ; and great satisfaction they had in dashing the 

 former against the ground. Still so many remained, that in one 

 district in the south-west of that county a clever gamekeeper trapped 

 fifteen Eagles in three months of 1847, and about as many in the 

 winter of 1850-1, almost all of them being Mountain Eagles. In 

 other parts of Scotland more frequented by south-country game- 

 keepers, they have been already almost exterminated, except in those 

 wild tracts preserved as Deer forests, upon several of which the pro- 

 prietors take real pleasure in seeing them circling overhead, ready to 

 gorge themselves with the " gralloch " as soon as a Stag has been cut 

 up. For, whatever may have been said to the contrary, they are great 

 carrion-eaters, as Scott well knew : — 



"■ That Highland Eagle e'er should feed 

 On thy fleet limbs, my matchless steed." 



[Lady of the Lake, Canto I. Stanza 9.] 



But the Trossachs is no feeding-place for the Eagle now, as it still was 

 in Sir Walter's time ! Only a few years ago a friend of mine saw no 

 less than nine of the two kinds collected round a dead horse, within 

 gunshot of the window of his father's house. This habit of theirs 

 gives sad facilities for their destruction. In Wales there were Eagles 

 not long ago : but the only account I know of a nest in England which 

 can with certainty be referred to the Golden Eagle is Willughby's 

 of the one in Derbyshire [' Ornithologia ' (1676), p. 19] ; for the nest 

 on the rocks near Plymouth [Mag. Nat. Hist. ser. 2. vol. i. p. 1 14] 

 is more likely to have been a Sea Eagle's. 



I have in different years carefully examined some eight or nine 

 distinct eyries of this bird in Scotland, and seen the old sites of a 

 good many more. It always, in this day at least, takes up its quarters 

 in some mountainous district, — never, as far as I have seen, in sea- 

 cliffs, but for the most part in a warm-looking rock, well clothed with 

 vegetation, and by no means very wild and exposed. Still there are 

 exceptions. I have seen several very high rocks selected ; and in these 

 cases the nest was generally near the top. In one instance I know of 

 a nest halfway up a very bleak mountain ; but then it is in the front 

 part of a little cave, from which the occupants enjoy the most magni- 

 ficent prospect. Into this nest one walks almost without climbing ; 

 at all events, two dogs followed our party into it. They are often in 

 places remarkably accessible. One nest, in a very low rock, was upon 

 a grassy ledge, into and out of which I vaulted with the greatest ease 



