202 GAME BIRDS AND WILD FOWL. 



ber of some of the rarest ; the anxiety to obtain 

 such curiosities, and the local temptations to pro- 

 cure them at all hazards, being of course in the 

 same ratio as the scarcity of the species. 



Besides the active trade carried on in this line 

 by purveyors from France and Holland ; even in 

 Orkney and Shetland, and the remote parts of 

 Scotland, the value of the eggs of the golden and 

 of the sea eagle are so well known to shepherds 

 and keepers that there is every probability of 

 these noble birds especially the former, whose 

 eyrie is generally on inland cliffs being more 

 effectually extirpated from this cause than from 

 any other. Although a recent specimen of ' the 

 king of the birds ' would always prove a welcome 

 acquisition to a museum, yet ignorance of the art 

 of taxidermy in these distant places, the diffi- 

 culty of preserving the body untainted in the 

 flesh until a moment of leisure, the probability 

 of its being too much lacerated by a successful 

 shot to admit of even a rude process being carried 

 into effect, and the chance of its falling over the 

 cliffs and being irretrievably lost ; all combine to 

 render these worthies less anxious to destroy the 

 birds themselves than to obtain their eggs, which 

 are easily blown, are comparatively portable, and 

 have lately become in such request that they 

 fetch, on the spot, from a pound to thirty shillings 



