SEA EAGLE. 59 



Bald Eagle, while seated on the dead carcass of a horse, keep a 

 whole flock of Vultures at a respectful distance, until he had 

 fully sated his own appetite. The Count has also taken great 

 pains to expose the ridiculous opinion of Pliny, who conceived 

 that the Ospreys formed no separate race, and that they pro- 

 ceeded from the intermixture of different species of Eagles, the 

 young of which were not Ospreys, only Sea Eagles; which Sea 

 Eagles, says he, breed small Vultures, which engender great 

 Vultures that have not the power of propagation* But, while 

 labouring to confute these absurdities, the Count himself, in his 

 belief of an occasional intercourse between the Osprey and the 

 Sea Eagle, contradicts all actual observation, and one of the most 

 common and fixed laws of nature; for it may be safely asserted, 

 that there is no habit more universal among the feathered race, 

 in their natural state, than that chastity of attachment, which 

 confines the amours of individuals to those of their own species 

 only. That perversion of nature produced by domestication is 

 nothing to the purpose. In no instance have I ever observed the 

 slightest appearance of a contrary conduct. Even in those birds 

 which never build a nest for themselves, nor hatch their young, 

 nor even pair, but live in a state of general concubinage: such 

 as the Cuckoo of the old, and the Cow Bunting of the new con- 

 tinent; there is no instance of a deviation from this striking 

 habit. I cannot therefore avoid considering the opinion above 

 alluded to, that "the male Osprey by coupling with the female 

 Sea Eagle produces Sea Eagles; and that the female Osprey by 

 pairing with the male Sea Eagle gives birth to Osprey s"t or Fish- 

 Hawks, as altogether unsupported by facts, and contradicted by 

 the constant and universal habits of the whole feathered race in 

 their state of nature. 



The Sea Eagle is said by Salerne to build on the loftiest oaks 

 a very broad nest, into which it drops two large eggs, that are 

 quite round, exceedingly heavy, and of a dirty white colour. 

 Of the precise time of building we have no account, but some- 



* Hist, Nat. lib. x, c. 3. t BUFFO w, vol. I, p. 80, Trans, 



