(50 THE GOLDEN EAGLE. 



They generally lead a wandering, solitary life, or associate in 

 pairs — male and female — a habit with eagles. The numbers of 

 this family, as might be expected from their typical character 

 and mission, are numerous, and distributed over the globe ; for 

 wherever there is exuberance in life there will be robbers and 

 plunderers ; as wherever there is death there will also be 

 scavengers and gravediggers. 



Many of the species, in their progress to maturity, have great 

 changes of plumage, sometimes taking two, three, four, and even 

 five years to mature ; consequently, an augmentation of supposed 

 species and confusion has been the result, through want of dis- 

 cernment and hasty conclusions. 



The gradual increase of knowledge, however, and careful 

 observation, have cleared up many of the doubts in which the 

 history of several species have been so long involved. Amongst 

 those naturalists who have recently done so much for the 

 advancement of this branch of science, Temnick and Montague 

 deserve to be ranked amongst the first, as it is mainly due to 

 their close study that many of the essential points have been 

 cleared up. 



The Golden Eagle or Mountain Eagle. 



(Falco Chrysaetos.) Linn. (Aquila Chrysaetus.) Selby. 



"Nay, if thou be that princely eagle's bird, 

 Show thy descent by gazing 'gainst the sun." — Henri/ VI. 



Having introduced the two vultures into this little work, I 

 shall now introduce a native of the wild and rugged rocks and 

 heath-clad hills of Scotland — " My own, my native land," as 

 Scott has it — and draw the portrait of a true Gael — that king of 

 birds, the so-called golden eagle. I say so-called, for, if we 

 except his eye, cere, legs, and tips of feathers, there is nothing 

 golden about him, but a plain, dusky-brown, daring, and bold- 

 looking bird — in every respect a true type of bonnie, brave, 

 auld Scotland, whose hardy sons, much more than the military 

 eagles of Rome, have swept over and helped to colonize every 

 quarter of the globe, and on many a freedom's battlefield at 

 home and throughout the world, when helping to build up the 

 great British Empire, have proved themselves amongst men 

 what the golden eagle is amongst birds. For notwithstanding 

 his partial misnomer, a genuine Scot and true Briton is the 

 golden eagle, and stands at the head of the Falconidae, which is 



