AQUILA CHRYSAETUS. 55 



So boldly typified by the red gregarach, Rob Roy, the outlawed 

 robber of Glengyle ; like Rob, the golden eagle feels himself 

 proscribed by all but Nature and freedom. He disdains the cat- 

 like inclination to kill for killing's sake ; he needs sustenance ; 

 he cannot pick grain nor feed on grass ; he craves for life ; he 

 knows he has the power, and he takes it without any qualm of 

 conscience wherever and whenever he can. Tennyson draws a 

 true picture when he says — 



" He clasps the crag with crooked hands : 

 Close to the sun in lonely lands, 

 Ringed with the azure world he stands. 

 The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls. 

 He watches from his mountain walls, 

 And like a thunderbolt he falls." 



Or, as Burns says, on scaring some water-fowl in Loch Turrit — 



" The eagle, from the cliffy brow, 

 Marking you his prey below, 

 In his breast no pity dwells, 

 Strong necessity compels." 



He goes about armed for murder — 'tis life he seeks. Nature 

 has given him the arms to take it, and whenever he gets the 

 chance, and needs it, the quickest mode is his — one blow on 

 the back of the head, another at the heart, and the deed is done. 

 For, his long needle-pointed claws encircle and squeeze like a 

 living vice in mercy to the bird within their grasp ; for wise 

 Nature has so powerfully, yet so mercifully, gifted him to take 

 speedily the life he seeks. In his beautiful poem of " Venus 

 and Adonis," Shakespeare draws a fine simile of the amorous 

 goddess kissing the young god of love, and a hungry eagle 

 tearing its prey — 



" Even as an empty eagle, sharp by fast, 

 Tires with her beak on feathers, flesh, and bone, 

 Shaking her wings, devouring all in haste, 

 Till either gorge be stuffed or prey be gone, 



Even so she kiss'd his brow, his cheek, his chin, 

 And where she ends she doth anew begin." 



But, although he disdains to feed on what he does not kill, 

 unless pressed by hunger, he or she has been often shot on 

 carcases placed near a covered pit where the gunner lay con- 

 cealed. And, as another proof that they sometimes feed on 

 carrion, no less than nine have been seen at one time feeding on 

 the carcase of a horse in the Highlands — not a hundred yards 

 distant from the house from which they were seen ; but such a 

 sight may never be seen again in Scotland, for they can scarcely 

 exist now in their native haunts — driven away, like the crofters, 



