GOLDEN EAGLE. '> 



quills are always rather turned up and separated, as is shown in 

 one of Landseer's beautiful pictures, in which an eagle is flying 

 across a loch to a dead stag which has been already discovered by 

 a fox." 



Mr Elwes has also informed me that one or two pairs of Golden 

 Eagles regularly inhabit the district of Gairloch in Ross shire and 

 breed there. In a recent letter to myself he says : " I lately saw 

 three nests which had been used in 1884, '65, and '66, by the 

 same pair of birds. The last nest was not at all difficult to get at, 

 as I got within three yards of it without a rope, and could easily 

 have gone into it had I wished. It was placed in a three cornered 

 ledge of rock, overhung by a cliff, a steep gully being within two 

 yards on one side." 



Writing from Skye in March, 1867, Capt. IX C. Cameron, of 

 Glenbrittle, obligingly sent me the following note: " Although 

 there are always two or three eyries of the Sea Eagle on my farm, 

 I only know of the Golden Eagle building above Loch Corruisk. 

 There was a nest there in 1865. I trapped the female ten miles 

 from the nest, I am sorry to say, and there was no nest there last 

 year. This was the first resumption of the old eyrie after the 

 young were taken by the survey men many years ago, and I was 

 quite delighted to see the birds come back, though I was the 

 innocent cause of the second desertion." Capt. Cameron also 

 states, with a view to show the comparative numbers of the 

 Golden and White-tailed Eagles, that out of sixty-five eagles that 

 he has killed or caused to be killed, only three were of the first- 

 named species. He has likewise sent me word that the Golden 

 Eagle has bred for several years past at Barcaldine, near Bonaw, 

 in Argyleshire, and that one of the nests was robbed by a shepherd 

 who trapped one of the birds. 



A few months ago a paragraph appeared in some of the Scottish 

 newspapers giving an account of a most extraordinary aerial combat 

 between an eagle of this species and a fox, which happened in 

 Strathmore, Caithness-shire, and was communicated by an eye- 

 witness to the Northern Ensign newspaper in the following letter. 

 Having written to the editor for further information on the 

 subject, I am assured by that gentleman that in every particular 

 the account may be implicitly relied on; the occurrence took place 

 on the hill of Benalskie: 



" The eagle was devouring the carcase of a mountain-hare when 



