BOOK X. III. 8-iv. 12 



the osprey, which has very keen eye-sight, and 

 which hovers at a great height and when it sees a fish 

 In the sea drops on it with a swoop and cleaving the 

 water with its breast catches it. The species that 

 we made the third hunts round marshes for water- 

 birds, which at once dive, till they become drowsy 

 and exhausted, when it catches them. The duel is 

 worth watchinff, the bird makinff for refuffe on the 



o ' o o 



shore, especially if there is a dense reed-bed, and the 

 eagle driving it away from the shore with a blow of 

 its wing ; and when it is hunting its quarry in a lake, 

 soaring and showing its shadow to the bird swimming 

 under water away from the shore, so that the bird 

 turns back again and comes to the surface at a place 

 where it thinks it is least expected. This is the 

 reason why birds swim in flocks, because several are 

 not attacked at the same time, since they blind the 

 enemy by splashing him with their wings. Often 

 even the eagles themselves cannot can-y the weight of 

 their catch and are drowned with it. The sea-eagle 

 only compels its still iinfledged chicks by beating 

 them to gaze full at the rays of the sun, and if it 

 notices one blinking and with its eyes watering flings 

 it out of the nest as a bastard and not true to stock, 

 whereas one whose gaze stands firm against the hght 

 it rears. Sea-eagles have no breed of their own but 

 are boi-n from cross-breeding with other eagles ; but 

 the offspring of a pair of sea-eagles belongs to the 

 osprey genus, from which spring the smaller vultures, 

 and from these the great vultures which do not breed 

 at all. Some people add a species of eagle which 

 they call the bearded eagle,'' but which the Tuscans 

 call an ossifrage. 



IV. The three first and the fifth kinds of eagle have Ea^ies' nests. 



299 



