SEA EAGLE. 43 



called there Gray Eagles, are continually seen sailing high and majesti- 

 cally over the watery tumult, in company with the Bald Eagles, eagerly 

 watching for the mangled carcasses of those animals that have heen 

 hurried over the precipice, and cast up on the rocks below, by the vio- 

 lence of the rapids. These are some of the circumstances on which my 

 suspicions of the identity of those two birds are founded. In some future 

 part of the work, I hope to be able to speak with more certainty on this 

 subject. 



Were we disposed, after the manner of some, to substitute for plain 

 matters of fact all the narratives, conjectures, and fanciful theories of 

 travellers, voyagers, compilers, &c., relative to the history of the Eagle, 

 the volumes of these writers, from Aristotle down to his admirer the 

 Count de Buffon, would furnish abundant materials for this purpose. 

 But the author of the present work feels no ambition to excite surprise 

 and astonishment at the expense of truth, or to attempt to elevate and 

 embellish his Subject beyond the plain realities of nature. On this ac- 

 count, he cannot assent to the assertion, however eloquently made, in 

 the celebrated parallel drawn by the French naturalist betw^een the Lion 

 and the Eagle, viz., that the Eagle, like the Lion, " disdains the posses- 

 sion of that property which is not the fruit of his own industry, and ■ 

 rejects with contempt the prey which is not procured by hjs own exer- 

 tions ;" since the very reverse of this is the case in the conduct of the 

 Bald and the St;i Eagle, who, during the summer months, are the con- 

 stant plunderers of the Osprey or Fish-Hawk, by whose industry alone 

 both are usually fed. Nor that " though famished for want of prey, he 

 disdains to feed on carrion" since we have ourselves seen the Bald 

 Eagle, while seated on the dead carcass of a horse, keep a whole flock 

 of Vultures at a respectful distance, until he had fully sated his own 

 appetite. The Count has also taken great pains to expose the ridicu- 

 lous opinion of Pliny, who conceived that the Ospreys formed no sepa- 

 rate race, and that they proceeded from the intermixture of different 

 species of Eagles, the young of which were not Ospreys, only Sea 

 Eagles; '■'■■which Sea Eagles" says he, ^^ breed small Vultures, which 

 engender great Vtdtures that have not the power of propagation."* But, 

 while laboring to confute these absurdities, the Count himself, in his 

 belief of an occasional intercourse between the Osprey and the Sea 

 Eagle, contradicts all actual observation, and one of the mosf common 

 and fixed laws of nature ; for it may be safely asserted, that there is no 

 habit more universal among the feathered race, in their natural state, 

 than that chastity of attachment, which confines the amours of indi- 

 viduals to those of their own species only. That perversion of nature 

 produced by domestication is nothing to the purpose. In no instance 



* Hist. Nat. lib. x., c. 3. 



