THt GOLDEN' EAGLE. 



267 



ted with ash colour : the legs are yellow, and feather- 

 ed down to the toes; and the claws are remarkably 

 large, the middle one being two inches in length. 



Eagles are seldom found but in mountainous and 

 thinly peopled countries, where they breed among 

 the loftiest clilFs, and in tlie places which 'are most 

 remote from man. 



Of all the feathered race, the eagle soars to the 

 greatest height, and for this reason has obtained 

 among the ancients the appellation of the bird of Ju- 

 piter. As he has not much suppleness in the joints 

 of his legs, he rises slowly from the ground; .but his 

 strength of wing is so great, that he is able to carry 

 off geese, hares, lambs, kids, and even infants them- 

 selves have fallen victims to his rapacity; a circum- 

 stance which might possibly give rise to the fable of 

 Ganymede. An instance is recorded of two children 

 in Scotland having been carried off by two eagles, 

 which being discovered and pursued, had only just 

 time to lodge them in their nest before they were 

 overtaken, and by that means the two little innocents 

 were restored to their terrified parents without hav- 

 ing received any harm. 



Smith, in his history of the County of Kerry, re- 

 lates, that during a summer when the scarcity of pro- 

 visions amounted almost to a famine, a poor man got 

 a comfortable subsistence for his family out of an 

 eagle's nest, by regularly robbing the young eagles 

 of part of the food provided for them by the old ones ; 

 having luckily hit on the expedient of protracting 

 their assiduity beyond the usual time, by clipping 

 the wings, and thus retarding the flight of the voung, 

 and having perhaps still more luckily escaped" being 

 surprised by the old ones in committing those depre- 

 dations on their premises. How fatal the conse- 

 quences of such a surprise might have been, may be 

 easily conjectured, from a circumstance which hap- 

 pened some years ago in the same county. A pea- 

 sant resolved to rob the nest of an eagle that had 

 built in a small island in the beautiful lake of Killar- 

 ney. He therefore stripped and swam to the island 



