ERNE. 9 



and after a greater or less exercise of patience, is rewarded 

 by the approach of the Eagle, attracted to its quarry, either 

 by its own immediate perceptions, or from its following other 

 birds attracted to it by the exercise of theirs. The ravens, 

 crows, and sea-gulls have preceded him to the repast, but his 

 arrival, harpy like, at once disperses them; the tables are 

 turned, and they are compelled at first to withdraw to a 

 respectful distance while he regales himself. But when he 

 himself has become a carrion, laid low by the deadly aim of 

 the ambuscade, it falls again to their lot to finish at leisure 

 the feast which so lately he had disturbed; perhaps even to 

 make a second course of his own defunct body. Mr. Macgillivray 

 says that he has known no fewer than five of these birds 

 destroyed in this manner by a single shepherd in the course 

 of one winter, and he also says that in the Hebrides, where 

 a small premium, a hen, I believe, from each house, or each 

 farm-house in the parish, is given for every Eagle killed, as 

 many as twenty fall victims every year. 



The same motive which prompts to the destruction of the 

 parent birds, leads also to various 'hair-breadth 'scapes' in 

 attempts to destroy their young. By means of ropes, the 

 attacking party is lowered over the edge of some awful-looking 

 precipice, some 'imminent deadly' crag for it is only in the 

 most secure retreats that the Erne builds, conscious, as it would 

 seem, of the odium under which he lives, and the proclamation 

 of outlawry which has been made against him in consequence 

 and having taken dry heather and a match with him, sets 

 fire to the nest, and both it and its tenants are consumed 

 before the gaze of the bereaved parents. Sometimes the eyrie 

 can be approached and destroyed without the aid of ropes, by 

 the experienced and adventurous climbers, who, habituated to 

 the perils of those stupendous cliffs, make little of descents and 

 ascents which would infallibly turn dizzy the heads of those 

 who have only been accustomed to 'terra firma.' 



This bird is the perpetual object of the buffets of the raven 

 and the skua gull, of whom he seems to be in the greatest 

 dread. It is indeed related that the latter does not exercise 

 this hostility in the Hebrides, but that it does in the Shetland 

 Islands; but I cannot understand how one individual bird, 

 and still less how a colony of birds, can be gifted with an 

 instinct not possessed by a colony of its own species in the 

 same region. 



In prowling for food near the ocean, the Erne generally 



