THE EAGLE. 97 



A more fortunate fate awaited a child in the Isle of Skye, 

 in Scotland, where a woman having left it in the field for a 

 short time, an Eagle carried it off in his talons across a 

 lake, and there deposited his burden. Some people herding 

 sheep perceived it, and hearing the infant cry, hurried to 

 the spot and found it uninjured. The name of the child 

 was Niel, but he was afterwards distinguished and called by 

 a Gaelic word, signifying Eagle. In Sweden a deplorable 

 circumstance occurred to the mother of a child : she was 

 working in the folds, and had laid her infant on the 

 ground, at a little distance ; soon after an Eagle darted 

 down, and carried it off. For a considerable time the 

 wretched woman heard the poor child screaming in the air, 

 but there was no help. She saw it no more ; in a little 

 time she lost her reason, and is, we believe, still living, 

 confined in the lunatic asylum of the town near which it 

 happened. 



An instance, it is said, occurred in the spring of 1847, 

 of an Eagle carrying off a boy of ten years of age, in the 

 Commune of Hery sur Alby, in the Canton of Geneva. 

 The little fellow had just rifled a nest, from which he had 

 taken the young Eaglets, thereby probably irritating the 

 old birds, and more powerfully exciting them ; for he was 

 immediately seized by one of them, and deposited on the 

 summit of a rock about 600 yards above the spot from 

 which he was raised ; and luckily before any further violence 

 was offered, he was rescued by some shepherds who were 

 engaged at no great distance. He had sustained no other 

 injury than a rather severe laceration from the Eagle's 

 claws. 



On Tirst Holm, one of the Feroe Islands, situated between 

 the north of Scotland and Iceland, a similar fact occurred ; 

 an Eagle caught up an infant lying at a little distance from 

 its mother, and carried it to its nest, situated on a point of 

 high rock, so steep that the boldest bird-catchers had never 

 ventured to attempt to climb it ; the mother, however, as- 

 cended and reached the nest, but alas ! too late : the child 

 was dead, and its eyes torn out. But the most striking story 

 H 



