GOLDEN EAGLE AND SEA EAGLE. 37 



the bird which has so frequently been made to 

 usurp his title in the south of England. The fact 

 is, that whenever an immature sea eagle,* in his 

 juvenile dress of shabby brown ere his cine- 

 reous coat and white tail pronounce him to have 

 arrived at years of discretion has wandered from 

 his native haunts, in the vain hope of getting a 

 living on our shores, and has fallen an easy vic- 

 tim to the watchful shepherd or the wily game- 

 keeper, a paragraph detailing the occurrence 

 forthwith goes the round of the local papers, and 

 the bird is gravely pronounced to be " a magnifi- 

 cent specimen of the golden eagle." 



Strange as this may seem to those who are 

 now well acquainted, not only with the general 

 characters of the two species, but with their ana- 

 tomical distinctions, yet to the uninitiated the dif- 

 ference does not appear so striking as might be 

 imagined. I remember on one occasion visiting 

 a museum with a friend a superficial observer 

 in whose eyes the young sea eagle seemed to bear 

 a greater affinity to the mature golden than to the 

 adults of its own species ; the dark beak and the 

 prevalent brown colour of the plumage in this 

 bird at once attracting his attention, while the un- 

 feathered tarsi and scutellated toes escaped his 

 notice. However well and thoroughly understood 



* Hali&etus albicilla. 



