70 THE WHITE-TAILED SEA EAGLE. 



thinks she, too, has a sacred mission to fulfil, like eagle- 

 mounted Jupiter in " Cymbeline," who said — "Mount, eagle, to 

 my palace crystalline," 



" He came in thunder ; his celestial breath 

 Was sulphurous to smell ; — the holy eagle 

 Stoop'd, as to foot us ; his ascension is 

 More sweet than our bless'd fields ; his royal bird 

 Prunes the immortal wing, and cloys his beak 

 As when his god is pleased." 



The idea has always been held that the eagle alone of all 

 creatures has eyes which can withstand the full blaze of the sun 

 at noonday. Milton, in his great prose work, " Areopagitica," 

 eloquently alludes to this : — " Methinks I see in my mind a 

 noble and puissant nation rousing herself like a strong man 

 after sleep and shaking her invincible locks. Methinks I see 

 her as an eaglejgnewing her mighty youth and kindling her 

 undazzled eyes at the full mid-day beam." The terms golden 

 eagle and spread eagle are commemorative of the Crusaders ; they 

 were the devices of the Emperors of the East. 



The Cinereous or White-Tailed Sea Eagle. 



(Halicetus Albicilla.) Mihi. (Vultur Albicilla.) Linn. 



Provincial — The Erne or White-Tailed Eagle. 



' ' The world is grown so bad 

 That wrens may prey where eagles dare not perch." — Richard III. 



Until lately the cinereous and white-tailed sea eagles were 

 considered two distinct species, like the ring-tailed and golden 

 eagle, from that old source of error, the difference of plumage 

 of the immature and the adult bird, the tail in both being the 

 confounding cause. We may safely say it takes five or six years 

 before the white-tailed eagle assumes the mature plumage from 

 which it takes its name, as Mr Wolley (a painstaking naturalist) 

 took two young ones from their nest and carefully watched them 

 for five years, noting each year their change of plumage. He 

 says — " In 1848 I took two full-fledged eaglets from their nest 

 on a ledge of perpendicular sea-cliff, which now, in 1853, nearly 

 five years old, have not yet completed their adult plumage, 



