308 THE SEA EAGLE. 



Strong pounceil, and ardent with paternal fire, 

 Now fit to raise a kingdom of their own, 

 He drives them from his fort, the towering-seat 

 For ages of his empire, which, in peace. 

 Unstained he holds ; while many a league to sea 

 He wings his course, and preys in distant isles. 



The Eev, Andrew Baird, who, in December 1834, wrote 

 the Eeport on the united parishes of Cockburnspath and 

 Oldcambus, in the Neio Statistical Account of Scotland, 

 mentions that the " Sea Eagle has been occasionally shot;" ^ 

 and Dr. Eobert D. Thomson, in his account of the parish of 

 Eccles, in the same year, says that it sometimes visits that 

 parish.^ An Eagle frequented Dabb's Head, a hill in 

 Lauderdale, for some time in the spring of 1844.^ A 

 specimen was trapped on South Eallaknowe, in the parish 

 of Coldingham, in March 1866.^ Writing in the last-men- 

 tioned year, Mr. W. P. TurnbuU remarks that this bird has 

 been frequently observed at St. Abb's Head ; ^ and Mr. 

 Eobert Gray states, in 1871, that it is occasionally seen in 

 autumn about the precipitous cliffs there.*^ In the autumn 

 of 1872 an Eagle, apparently of this species, was observed 

 on the top of Huntlaw (1625 feet), on the boundary be- 

 tween the parishes of Lauder and Longformacus ; and in 

 December of that year a specimen was trapped at Charter- 



1 New Statistical Account of Scotland, vol. ii. (Berwickshire), p. 291. 



2 Ibid. vol. ii. (Berwickshire), p. 53. 



3 Information from Mr. Johnston, farmer, Huntington, Lauder. Dabb's 

 Head is one of the most consj)icuous points of the Lanimermoor HilLs, on the old 

 farm of Earnscleugh, which is now incorporated with the farm of Burncastle, 

 near Lauder. It is, according to the Ordnance Survey Map of Berwickshire, 

 1257 feet above the level of the sea. 



4 This specimen was erroneously reported in tlie local newspapers of the time 

 as a Golden Eagle, and Mr. Turnbull, in his Birds of East-Lothian (p. 9), records 

 it as such. Mi*. W. Paterson, late of North Berwick Abbey Farm, who is well 

 acquainted with British birds, of which he had a large collection, wrote to me 

 on the 8th of May 1886, that he saw the example referred to, at the house of the 

 gamekeeper who trapped it, shortly after it was caught, and found it to be a 

 fine specimen of the White-Tailed Eagle. 



5 Birds of East- Lothian, 1866, p. 10. 



c Birds of the West of Scotland, 1871, p. 13. 



