10 AQUILA CHRYSAETUS. 



from the top of the rock ; and three nests of other years, in different 

 spots in the same ravine, within a hundred yards or so, were all 

 accessible without ropes. Another, which was described to me by a 

 most accurate person, who offered to show it to me, was on the ground, 

 at the foot of a rock on the rise of a hill ; and near it, also upon the 

 ground, was an old nest of a former year. This was some hundreds 

 of miles away from the pair of Golden Eagles in Orkney, which one 

 year allowed an old woman to walk by chance into their nest and carry 

 off the eggs in her apron. At another eyrie, into which I had climbed 

 with some difficulty, I was enabled to find a very easy path out, by 

 following the ledge where I saw that some sheep had been not long 

 before. The eyrie from which I took the pair of eggs figured by Mr. 

 Hewitson [Eggs B. B. ed. 3. pi. iii.] was in a bad part of a great 

 and perpendicular crag, under a very sharp shelf beyond a ledge, 

 whence we could use the ropes. Its support was small, and the mass 

 of the nest was consequently large. A few yards from it, on either 

 side, were old nests of former years, one of which had been recently 

 repaired, and was connected with the occupied one by a continuous 

 platform of sticks. One eyrie is generally in a corner protected from 

 the wind on one side ; and the rock overhangs more or less, so as to 

 shelter it, but by no means so as to hide it from a gun above. The 

 platform of rock is often very broad ; and when it is also flat, there 

 are not many sticks used. It has for the most part some kind of 

 vegetation upon it, and generally more or less of the broad-leaved 

 grass called Luzula sylvatica, which, with other plants, often extends 

 in a green stripe a long way below the nest, owing to the richness of 

 the soil, — a mark by which an experienced eye can, from a great 

 distance, detect an old eyrie on a mountain, some years after it has 

 been disused. There is sometimes a sapling tree at the edge of the 

 platform in front ; and in the Derbyshire nest [described by Willughby] 

 it was no doubt the lower part of the bole that helped the rock to 

 support the fabric. A nest is generally five or six feet in its greatest 

 width, considerably less at the top : sometimes the mass of materials 

 would fill a cart, but in other situations there is no great quantity. 

 The very largest of the sticks used may be an inch in diameter, but 

 most of them are less. Upon these is laid freshly-gathered heather ; 

 and in one instance large sprigs of Scotch fir, broken off for the 

 purpose. The top part is composed of fern, grass, moss, or any other 

 convenient material, but principally (and, as far as I have seen, in- 

 variably) of tufts of Luzula sylvatica, which, by the time the eggs are 

 hatched, are still fresh and green towards the outside of the nest, but 

 dried up in the centre with the heat of the bird's body, [so as to look] 



