102 THE EAGLE. 



child, who had been carried up by a Lsemmergeyer, or 

 Bearded Vulture, from a valley below, in spite of the 

 shouts of some peasants who saw the bird pounce upon 

 its prize. It is called the Bearded Vulture from the 

 tuft of bristles on each cheek, as represented in the 

 figure at p. 29. 



A more fortunate fate awaited a child in the Isle of 

 Skye in Scotland, where a woman having left it in the 

 field for a short time, an Eagle carried it off in his talons 

 across a lake, and there deposited its burden; some 

 people herding sheep perceived it, and hearing the in- 

 fant cry, hurried to the spot and found it uninjured. 

 The name of the child was Niel, but he was afterwards 

 distinguished and called by a Gaelic word, signifying 

 Eagle. In Sweden a deplorable circumstance occurred 

 to the mother of a child ; she was working in the folds, 

 and had laid her infant on the ground, at a little dis- 

 tance ; soon after an Eagle darted down and carried it 

 off. For a considerable time the wretched woman heard 

 the poor child screaming in the air, but there was no 

 help. She saw it no more ; in a little time she lost her 

 reason, and is, we believe, still living, confined in the 

 lunatic asylum of the town near which it happened. 



An instance, it is said, occurred in the spring of 1847 

 of an Eagle carrying off a boy of ten years of age, in . 

 the Commune of Hery sur Alby, in the Canton of 

 Geneva. The little fellow had just rifled a nest, from 

 which he had taken the young Eaglets, thereby probably 

 irritating the old birds, and more powerfully exriting 

 them ; for he was immediately seized by one of them, 

 and deposited on the summit of a rock about 600 yards 

 above the spot from which he was raised; and luckily 

 before any further violence were offered, he was rescued 

 by some shepherds who were engaged at no great dis- 

 tance. He had sustained no other injury than a rather 

 severe laceration from the Eagle's claws. 



On Tirst Holm, one of the Feroe Islands, situated 

 between the north of Scotland and Iceland, a similar 



