10 BIRDS OF AUSTRALIA. 



the stock-owners, who employ every artifice in their power to 

 effect its extirpation ; and in Tasmania considerable rewards 

 are offered for the accomplishment of the same end. The 

 tracts of untrodden ground and the vastness of the impene- 

 trable forests will, however, for a long series of years to come 

 afford it an asylum, secure from the inroads of the destroying 

 hand of man ; still, with every one waging war upon it, its 

 numbers must necessarily be considerably diminished. For 

 the sake of the refuse thrown away by the Kangaroo-hunters 

 it will often follow them for many miles, and even for days 

 together. I clearly ascertained that, although it mostly feeds 

 upon living prey, it does not refuse to devour carrion or ani- 

 mals almost in a state of putridity. During one of my jour- 

 neys into the interior to the northward of the Liverpool Plains, 

 I saw no less than thirty or forty assembled together around 

 the carcase of a dead bullock, some gorged to the full, perched 

 upon the neighbouring trees, the rest still in the enjoyment of 

 the feast. 



Those nests that I had opportunities of observing were 

 placed on the most inaccessible trees, and were of a very large 

 size, nearly flat, and built of sticks and boughs. Although, 

 during the months of August and September, I repeatedly 

 shot the birds from their eyrie, in which there were eggs, I 

 was quite unable to obtain them — no one but the aborigines 

 (of which none remain in Tasmania) being capable of ascending 

 such trees, many of which rise to more than a hundred feet 

 before giving off a branch. But during the year 1864 a 

 fine egg was presented to me by George French Angas, Esq. ; 

 and my son Charles, now engaged upon a geological survey 

 of Tasmania, informs me that he has obtained others on that 

 island. The egg is very similar in form and size to those of 

 the Golden Eagle of Europe. It is clouded with large blotches 

 of pale purple, and small specks and dashes of yellowish 

 umber-brown on a stone-coloured ground, and is three inches 

 in length by two and a half in breadth. 



