JANUARY 19 



mountains and plains of the habitable parts of the earth 

 have been pretty completely ransacked by this time. 

 Of invertebrate creatures the catalogue is still capable 

 of indefinite expansion; but of birds, beasts, reptiles, 

 and fish there can remain no more than a very small 

 minority to be revealed. The greater glory then is due 

 to Mr. Whitehead in his discovery (reported in 1898) of 

 the great forest eagle of the Philippine Islands (Pithe- 

 cophaga Jeffryi). That this magnificent bird, of which 

 the only specimen obtained weighed nearly twenty 

 pounds, should have escaped hitherto the vigilance of 

 wandering naturalists, is owing to the impenetrable 

 nature of its haunts, which are the dense forests of the 

 island of Samar, where many of the trees are upwards 

 of two hundred and forty feet in height. Day after day 

 Mr. Whitehead watched these mighty eagles circling 

 far out of shot near his camp, till at last one of his 

 collectors, having marked a male bird alighting on a 

 lofty tree, stalked it and succeeded in lodging a single 

 buckshot in the neck. Even then the booty was far 

 from being secured, for the tremendous talons of the 

 dead bird still clung to the branch; but one of the 

 natives climbed the tree and released them. The skin 

 now in the British Museum, shows an aquiline character 

 of the highest type. The head is adorned with a shaggy 

 crest ; the skull is larger even than that of the harpy, 

 which seems to be the nearest allied species ; while the 

 bill is exceedingly powerful and equalled in depth by 

 that of only one bird of prey hitherto known Pallas's 

 sea-eagle. Its favourite prey consists of green monkeys, 



