10 ERNE. 
flies along the side of the cliff, at an elevation of a tew hun- 
dred feet, but its powers of sight, or of smell, enable it to 
discover a dead quarry from a vastly greater height, and from 
thence it will stoop like a thunderbolt upon it. True it is, 
that its sense of smell does not enable it to detect the presence 
of a man concealed from its sight at the distance of only a 
few yards, but this can be no argument whatever against its 
having a keen scent for that which forms naturally a large 
proportion of its food, and especially when it is so strongly 
calculated to act powerfully on the organs of scent. 
The Erne is never a gregarious bird; its habits perhaps 
forbid the exercise of the sociable qualities. Five is the largest 
number that have been seen in company, even when assembled 
to prey on a common carrion, and at other times, if as many 
as three are observed together, it is probably just before the 
breeding season, or at, and subsequent to that time: it is not 
until some weeks after the young birds have forsaken the 
nest, that both the parents leave it altogether. 
An Erne has been known to be attacked by a hawk, supposed 
to be, probably a Goshawk, and struck down into the sea, both 
birds falling together. One has been seen in the island of 
Hoy, sailing off with a pig in its talons, which on enquiry 
at the farm from whence it had been stolen, was found by 
the clergyman of the place, who witnessed the fact, to have 
been four weeks old. Another which had a hen in its talons, 
dropped it to make a swoop at a litter of pigs, but the sow, 
with maternal courage, repelled the aggressor, who consequently 
lost his previous prey, which escaped safely, decidedly a narrow 
escape, into the farm-house. Another is recorded to have 
entered a turf pig-stye, in which a pig had died, and being 
unable to escape through the hole at the top, by which it 
had descended, in the way of the hungry mouse in the fable, 
was caught in this novel and unintentional kind of trap, and 
slain in due course. Others are decoyed in Sutherlandshire, 
and doubtless in the same manner elsewhere, into a square kind 
of stone box with an opening at one end, in which has been 
fixed a noose: the Eagle, after eating of the bait placed within 
it, walks lazily out of the opening, and is caught by the 
loop. 
On one occasion, a large salmon was found dead on the 
shore of Moffat water, and an immense Erne lifeless also beside 
it, having met its fate by being hooked by its own claws to 
a fish too large and powerful for it to carry off—an unwilling 
