PANDION HALI^TUS. 87 



lifting it out of the water, but instantly to be withdrawn if it 

 has caught a tartar in the shape of a fish too heavy to lift, 

 without which facility, instead of the osprey lifting the fish into 

 the air, the fish would drag the bird down into the water and 

 be drowned, as.sometimes happens with the sea eagle. Although 

 Wilson, the American ornithologist, says that sturgeons and 

 other large fish, with the fish hawk fast to them, have been 

 found dead on the sea-shore — yet " he never saw them," and 

 though he had, there is no stereotyped rule in Nature, and any 

 deviation from her general law only helps to show its general 

 rectitude, as a man may tumble out of a window although the 

 door be there. It is a great pity that this beautiful and com- 

 paratively harmless bird is not more numerous in Britain, for, 

 except in the thinly-peopled districts of Scotland beyond the 

 Grampians, it is seldom seen, and rarely even there. One, 

 however, was shot last May near Inveresk, and this paragraph 

 shows how it is hunted down : — 



" On Wednesday an osprey eagle was shot by a keeper on the estate of 

 Lord Elphinstone, at Carberry, near Inveresk. It measured 2 feet long 

 and 5 feet 6 inches from tip to tip of wings ; it was seen on the estate for 

 some days, and when bi-ought down fought determinedly for life, but was 

 at length overpowered and killed." 



A pair used to breed on Loch Maree, where there are plenty 

 of trout and salmon; also on the larger lochs, such as Loch 

 Laggan, Loch Tay, Loch Awe, and Loch Lomond, and in 

 Sutherland and Caithness shires; also in the eastern and 

 some of the midland Counties of England. The nest is 

 generally on the highest part of ruins (such as the chimney) — on 

 islands, in lakes and lochs, or on rocks and trees adjacent. They 

 lay in the beginning of May ; but they are too often robbed of 

 trheir eggs, and the young hardly ever permitted to fly, which 

 accounts for their decreasing numbers in Scotland. The nest 

 reminds one of that of the wood ant, being usually in the form 

 of a cone cut off at the top. The sticks project very slightly 

 from the sides, and are built up with turf and other compact 

 materials ; the summit is of moss, flat and even ; the cavity 

 forms but a small part of it. There is not another nest like it. 

 The osprey is true to its old haunts, and, if not killed, returns 

 from year to year to the same nest. The eggs are two or three, 

 rarely four, about 2 J inches long by If inches — yellowish white, 

 finely marked, and almost covered with large patches of deep 

 reddish brown. They are more oval than those of the rest of 

 the Falconidse. Although rare with us, the osprey is abundant 



