120 THE EAGLE. 



aloft with his dagger, which glistened brightly in the 

 sun, he called upon the royal bird to come down. To 

 his own amazement, no less than to the consternation 

 of the surrounding Indians, the Eagle seemed to obey 

 the charm, for instantly shooting down with the Telo- 

 city of an arrow, it impaled itself on the point of his 

 weapon. 



Fierce and savage as these birds usually are, they 

 notwithstanding appear in some instances to lay aside 

 these habits, and manifest a kind and protecting dispo- 

 sition, particularly towards little birds : thus it has been 

 observed, that an African Eagle (Falco albescens), though 

 it will suffer no bird of any size to come near its haunt, 

 will nevertheless permit small ones not only to reside near 

 it, but even to perch upon its nest without offering them 

 any violence, and still more, will protect them against 

 the attack of other rapacious birds which might be dis- 

 posed to devour them. The Osprey, or Fishing Eagle 

 of North America (Falco halicetus), allows the Grakle, or 

 New England Jackdaw, as it is termed, to take the same 

 liberty, these birds building their nests among the loose 

 sticks forming the base of the Eagle's nest, apparently 

 neither dreading nor inconvenienced by the bird of prey, 

 which rears its young above them*. 



However cunning and sagacious we have seen them to 

 be in their modes of providing for their own wants, and 

 entrapping other birds and animals, they are occasionally 

 overreached by well-contrived plans, and at times have 

 been made prisoners by animals not surpassing them in 

 size and power. Thus, about ten years ago, as a gentle- 

 man's groom in Nottinghamshire, was early one morning 

 exercising his master's horses, a terrier dog which ac- 

 companied him put up from a bush a fine Eagle, measur- 

 ing from tip to tip of his wings nearly eight feet. It 

 flew slowly over the hedge into a neighbouring field, 

 pursued by the dog, who came up with and attacked it 



* KING'S Narrative, vol. ii. p. 217. 



