78 THE WHITE-TAILED SEA EAGLE. 



travel long over the burning sand without water, owing to its 

 multifarious stomachs ; and the tortoise can live for months 

 without tasting a single dandelion leaf or blade of grass. So 

 the large crop of the erne may help it in its long fasts. For, 

 while birth, life, and death play their important parts in the 

 world, such scavengers and such butchers as the vultures and 

 eagles are a stern necessity. And as the vultures are the types 

 of the carrion consumers, the falcons (including the golden 

 eagle) are the types of the destroyers of exuberant life — the 

 sea eagle being the hybrid between them — a bold-looking but 

 cowardly feathered Bardolph — the true type of a big, bullying, 

 selfish, cowardly man. So like the sea eagle — 



" Which, to betray, doth wear an eagle's form, 

 Seize with an eagle's talons. " 



To fill his maw his mission — no matter whether with carrion or 

 offal, fish or flesh, or gobbled U P vour| g — n °k to fight ; for he 

 would sheer off and slink away even from a pugnacious little 

 tom-tit if he disputed his right, as Pistol had to eat the leek 

 from the hand of the plucky little Welshman. So — 



" From this session, interdict 

 Every fowl of tyrant wing 

 Save the eagle, feather'd king." — Venus and Adonis. 



This applies to all petty tyrants, who have not the natural 

 ability to be amongst men what the golden eagle is amongst 

 birds. But as the timid sheep will defend her lamb against the 

 wolf, and the hen her chickens against the erne, so sometimes 

 will the erne defend her young even against man, which the 

 following fact from the Scotsman shows : — 



" A pair of sea eagles had an eyrie in the cleft of a great sea-cliff, known 

 as the Bard of Bressay — the island which landlocks Lerwick harbour in 

 Shetland. On the east side its cliffs rise sheer out of the sea about 500 feet ; 

 pierced and broken as these are at the base with fantastic cliffs and ' stacks,' 

 they form a picturesque bit of rock scenery, which tourists try to ' do ' by 

 boat from Lerwick when the weather is favourable. The depredations of 

 the eagles on the farms upon Bressay and the adjacent mainland were 

 extensive. The hungry eaglets required food, and, almost daily, lambs were 

 missed. To put a stop to this, a project was made to rob the nest. A daring 

 young She tLmder — noted for his courage and spirit, an excellent shot, a 

 splendid swimmer, and a fearless climber — volunteered to go over the Bard 

 of Bressay and rob the eyrie of the eagles. The risk was great, for, besides 

 the peril of the descent, there was the chance of a fight with the old birds. 

 The nest could not be seen by looking over the crag ; but from a cliff on 

 the north side, which projects farther seaward, the position could be made 

 out with a good glass. The place where the nest was is known as the 

 ' pond ' of the Bard of Bressay. A good way down the cliff is a large pro- 

 jecting boss, like an oriel window, with a great cleft in the middle of it. In 

 this cleft the nest was built. As a descent could not be made without help, 



