LEAVES FROM THE NOTE-BOOK OF A NATURALIST. 



31 



have disgusted them with the whole proceeding, 

 for we cannot learn that the female has produced 

 an egg since. 



The attachment of the parents to the young, 

 though it does not seem to reach the self-devotion 

 of the stork, to which I have in a former chapter 

 alluded, is very great. A person near Norfolk, 

 U. S., informed Wilson, that in clearing a piece 

 of woods on his ground, they met with a large 

 dead pine-tree, on which was a nest of one of 

 these birds containing young. Fire was set to 

 the tree, the crackling flames ascended, the tree 

 was in a blaze more than half-way up ; the 

 wretched parent darted round and round through 

 the fire until her plumage was so much injured 

 that it was with difficulty she made her escape, 

 and, even in that condition, she several times at- 

 tempted to return, all the mother rising in her, 

 and driving her to attempt the relief of her doomed 

 nestlings. 



In a dissection by Dr. Samuel Smith, of Phil- 

 adelphia, the eggs were found to be small and 

 numerous ; and this, the observer remarks, may 

 account for the unusual excitement manifested by 

 these birds in pairing time. But, he adds, why 

 there are so many is a mystery. 



It is, perhaps, consistent with natural law that 

 everything should be abundant ; but from this bird, 

 it is said, no more than two young are hatched in a 

 season, consequently no more eggs are wanted than 

 a sufficiency to produce that effect. Are the eggs 

 numbered originally, and is there no increase of 

 number, but a gradual loss till all are deposited 1 

 If so, the number may correspond to the long life 

 and vigorous health of this noble bird. Why there 

 are but two young in a season is easily explained. 

 Nature has been studiously parsimonious of her 

 physical strength, from whence the tribes of ani- 

 mals incapable to resist derive security and confi- 

 dence. 



That which the indefatigable Mr. Gould could 

 not obtain in the native country of the bird, he 

 may now find in the Garden of the Zoological 

 Society of London. The wedge-tailed eagle,* 

 the Wol-dja of the aborigines of the mountain and 

 lowland districts of Western Australia, the eagle- 

 hawk of the colonists, and the mountain eagle of 

 New South Wales, of Collins, laid the first egg 

 deposited in this country by one of her race on 

 the 27th of February in the present year. On 

 the 28th it was placed under a common hen, which 

 sat very close, but fruitlessly, and on the 21st of 

 March the addled egg was removed. On the 4th 



* Aquila fucosa, Cuv. In the gallery of the French 

 Museum it appears to have been ticketed, according to 

 Mr. Bennett, as Aq'uila fuscosa, a name under which it 

 is mentioned in the Supplement to the Dictionnaire des 

 Sciences Naturelles, in the English translation of Cuvier's 

 work, and in the last edition published hy himself. Mr. 

 Bennett supposes that this "unmeaning term " crept in 

 erroneously for fucosa, as Temminck and Vigors both 

 write it, and as ornithologists now generally do. Some 

 better appellation than either might have been found for 

 so nohle a species. But names must not he altered, or 

 the greatest confusion there is quite enough already 

 would prevail. 



of March she laid a second egg, which was also 

 placed under a hen now sitting. 



What the golden eagle is to the northern hem- 

 isphere, the wedge-tailed eagle is to the southern. 

 Universally spread over the southern portion of 

 Australia, numerous in Van Diemen's Land and 

 on the larger islands of Bass' Straits, Mr. Gould 

 is of opinion that it will, in all probability, be 

 found to extend its range as far towards the tropics 

 in the south as the golden eagle does in the north. 

 Of great power and ferocity, it is the scourge of 

 the shepherds and stock-owners, who wage deadly 

 war against it, and unweariedly seek its extirpa- 

 tion. One, killed by Mr. Gould, weighed nine 

 pounds, and measured six feet eight inches in alar 

 extent; but his impression is, that far Larger indi- 

 viduals have come under his notice. Some opin- 

 ion of its strength may be formed from the act of 

 the bird figured by Collins, which was captured 

 by Captain Waterhouse, during an excursion to 

 Broken Bay, and struck its talons through a man's 

 foot, while lying in the bottom of the boat with 

 its legs tied together. During the ten days of its 

 captivity, it refused food from all but one person. 

 The natives, who looked on it with fear, could not 

 be prevailed on to go near it, and they asserted 

 that it would carry off a middling-sized kanguroo. 

 But the brave bird could not brook confinement ; 

 and one morning the broken rope, by which it was 

 fastened, was all that remained. The captive had 

 divided the strands and soared away. 



Its natural prey consists chiefly of the smaller 

 species of kanguroo. These its piercing eye de- 

 tects as it wheels aloft, circling gracefully till a 

 victim is marked, when down it conies with uner- 

 ring and fell swoop. Mr. Gould states that the 

 bustard,* whose weight is twice that of its enemy, 

 and which finds a more secure asylum on the ex- 

 tensive plains of the interior, is not safe from its 

 attacks ; and Mr. Cunningham mentions even the 

 emew as its prey. But the kanguroos seem to 

 have been its staple, and probably still are in those 

 parts of the interior where civilized man has not 

 yet penetrated. Of the multitudes of those quad- 

 rupeds in old times we may judge by the account 

 given by Captain Flinders of Kanguroo Island, 

 where they were living in amity with the seals, 

 as appears from the picturesque engraving from 

 the drawing made by the lamented Mr. Westall. 

 The captain writes that it was too late to go on 

 shore in the evening of Sunday, 21st March, 1802, 

 but every glass in the ship was pointed there to 

 see what could be discovered. Several black 

 lumps, like rocks, were asserted to have been seen 

 in motion by some of the young gentlemen, of 

 whom the gallant Sir John Franklin, for whose 



* This was probably the bird shot hy Mr. Ferdinand 

 Bauer on Wellesley's Islands, which weighed between 

 ten and twelve pounds, and made Captain Flinders and 

 his party " an excellent dinner," after poor Mr. Bauer 

 had carried it on his back many a weary furlong. The 

 captain remarks that the flesh of this bird is distributed 

 in a manner directly contrary to that of the domestic 

 turkey ; the white meat being upon the legs, ard the 

 black upon the breast. 



