NOTE -BOOK OF A NATUEALIST. 93 



wTierein were two yovmg, one of wliicli appeared nearly 

 three times as large as the other. One of these nestlings 

 might have had the lion's share of the food brought by 

 the parents ; but the story of the hatching at long in- 

 tervals is so contrary to all known rules of incubation, that 

 it must be received with the greatest doubt. 



We must leave the grand native solitudes where this 

 eagle constructs his eiry for the cabined, cribbed, con- 

 fined cell, where our poor prisoners did their best to obey 

 nature's law. 



The female began to sit on her eggs on the 8th of 

 April, and the pair were seen by hundreds steadily per- 

 severing, notwithstanding the gaze of the visitors, from 

 day to day, in a close incubation till the 6th of June, 

 when the worthless eggs were removed. The male was 

 very attentive to the female, and both took their regular 

 turns in sitting. Their entire want of success seems, 

 however, to have disgusted them with the whole jDroceed- 

 inof, for we cannot learn that the female has produced an 

 effff 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 

 laro^e 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 attempted 

 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 Philadephia, 

 the eggs were found to be small and numerous; and this, 



