NOTE-BOOK OF A NATURALIST. 19 



reason for believing that the stories told of the other vul- 

 tures, in their free and natural state, standing respectfully 

 aloof till their king has fiuished his repast, are not ground- 

 less, the respect being probably due to the superior 

 courage of the monarch. 



Of the condors, two males and one female are now 

 alive in the garden of the society; but no egg has been 

 laid since that whose history we have attempted to give 

 was deposited. 



In the same garden the king vulture — this looks very 

 like poor dear Theodore Hook's story of the cock 

 maccaws laying eggs — has laid, but it never sat. The 

 Chinese \^dture has done the same, but never attempted 

 incubation. The wedge-tailed eagle of New Holland, 

 and the lammergeyer sighing for her mate and her moun- 

 tains, have dropped eggs, but never attempted incuba- 

 tion. The eagle owl* entered upon the business of the 

 continuation of the species with greater energy and 

 gravity. She laid and sat, but sat in vain : not an owlet 

 rewarded her anxiety. 



The white-headed eagles seemed very much in earnest. 

 Of them the reader may know more hereafter, if he 

 should choose to kill time by looking upon these 

 pages. 



This, we are told, is a world of compensation, though 

 the compensation is too often terribly on one side, as in 

 the often-repeated case of Englishmen being called upon 

 to pay for * the vested interests' of a nuisance that would 

 not be tolerated for three months in any city of civilized 

 Europe except London — Smithfield Market, for instance. 

 But still this best of all possible worlds is a world of 

 compensation. In obedience to this law, Mr. Yarrell, in 

 his excellent History of British Birds, has recorded a 

 most interesting account of a buzzard f hatching chickens, 



* Strix Bubo. f Buteo vulr/a? 



