174 EAGLE 
increased of late years than diminished ; for the foresters and shep- 
herds, finding that a high price can be got for their eggs, take care 
to protect the owners of the eyries, which aré nearly all well 
known, and to keep up the stock by allowing them at times to rear 
their young. There are also now not a few occupiers of Scottish 
forests who interfere so far as they can to protect the “king of 
birds.” But hardly thirty years ago resort was had without stint 
to trapping, poisoning, and other destructive devices, and there 
Sea-Eacue. (After Wolf.) 
was then every probability that before long not an Eagle of any 
kind would be left to add the wild majesty of its appearance to 
the associations of the mountain, the cliff, or the lake! In Ireland 
1 The late Lord Breadalbane (John, 2nd Marquess of the first creation, and 
5th Earl) who died in 1862, was perhaps the first large landowner who set the 
example that has been since followed by others. On his unrivalled forest of 
Black Mount, Eagles—elsewhere persecuted to the death—were by him ordered 
to be unmolested so long as they were not numerous enough to cause consider- 
able depredations on the farmers’ flocks. He thought, and all who have an eye 
for the harmonies of nature will agree with him, that the spectacle of a soaring 
a 
oe 
