THE EAGLE. 115 



called the Chirk, is taught to strike an antelope, a 

 beautiful species of small deer, and retard its speed, by 

 fastening on its head, till the greyhounds come up. 



But a still more extraordinary mode, by which the 

 Eagle contrives to kill even oxen, is mentioned as often 

 witnessed in Heligoland, a small and now deserted rocky 

 island in the German Ocean, off the coast of Denmark. 

 Persons resident there, state, that it first flies away to 

 the sea, and then plunging into the waves, returns to 

 land, where it rolls itself on the shore, till its wings are 

 quite covered with sand. It then rises again, and hovers 

 over its victim. When close to it, it shakes its wings, 

 and thus scatters the gravel and sand into the eyes of 

 the ox, while it adds to the fright of the animal by 

 blows with its powerful wings. The blinded animal 

 becomes stupefied, and runs about quite raving, and, at 

 length, falls down wholly exhausted; or, like the deer in 

 the Shiant Islands, dashes itself to death by falling over 

 some cliff; when the Eagle mangles undisturbed the 

 fruits of its victory*. 



There is a remarkably fine Eagle in North America, 

 called the great Sea Eagle, or Bird of Washington: it is 

 very rare, confining itself usually to lonely situations, 

 occasionally, however, following the hunters, to feed on 

 the entrails of the animals they kill, when excluded by 

 ice from its favourite water-haunts, where in open wea- 

 ther it dives for fish. 



A naturalist, who was extremely anxious to meet 

 with one, had long laboured in vain, when one day, as 

 he was engaged in collecting cray-fish, near the Ohio, a 

 large river in North America, he chanced to observe on 

 the rocks, which at that place were nearly perpendicular, 

 a quantity of white droppings, which led him to conclude 

 that Owls resorted thither; but, having been assured by 

 a more experienced companion, that they must have 

 fallen from a nest of one of their long-looked-for Birds 

 of Washington, and that the old ones caught fish on the 



* Annals of Philosophy, vol. i. 



12 



