218 HABITS OF BIRDS. 
lived fifty years ; and Raczynski another, kept at the 
court of Bavaria for forty years. 
“ Eagles,” says Pennant, “are remarkable for 
their longevity, and for their power of sustaining a 
long abstinence from food. A golden engle, which 
has now been nine years in the possession of Owen 
Holland, Esq., of Conway, lived thirty-two years 
with the gentleman who made him a present of it; 
but what its age was when the latter received it 
from Ireland is unknown. The same bird also fur- 
nishes a proof of the truth of the other remark, 
having once, through the neglect of servants, en- 
dured hunger for twenty-one days, without any sus- 
tenance whatsoever.” 
The great age of the eagle is beautifully alluded 
to in the Psalms, where it is said of the righteous 
man that “his youth is renewed like the eagle’s,” a 
passage which greatly exercised the ingenuity of 
the ancient fathers and other commentators in fan- 
cying the manner in which the eagle did renew its 
youth. The greater number of them, and among 
these, St. Jerome, St. Ambrose, St. Gregory, Ni- 
cephorus, and Rabbi David, say that when the bird 
begins to fee] advancing age from the weight of its 
feathers and the dimness of its eyes, it betakes it- 
self to a fountain of water, and, plunging therein, has 
its whole frame renovated. St. Damian adds, that 
before immersion, it so places itself in the focus 
of the sun’s rays (ad circulum solis) as to set its 
wings on fire, and in this way to consume the old 
feathers; proving pretty plainly that St. Damian 
was not aware of the natural mode of birds renew- 
ing their feathers by moulting. Rabbi David adds, 
that when it delays the operation too long it has not 
strength to rise from the water, and is frequently 
drowned. 
St. Augustine says, that when the eagle becomes 
very old, the upper mandible of the beak grows so 
Jong that the bird can no longer feed, in which case 
