64 THE GOLDEN EAGLE. 



is effected, must be immense : to sustain itself without 

 motion of the wings is astonishing enough, but it is 

 nothing to a rapid motion upward, from no fulcrum but 

 the thin air. It is 



THE GOLDEN EAGLE. 



FOR many years she has had her eyrie in those cliffs. 

 She has laid the surrounding heaths and valleys under 

 contribution, for the support of those successive broods, 

 for which, while they were young, she was so attentive 

 in rending the prey ; but which, when they grew up, 

 she drove far from her own immediate haunt, to become 

 the monarchs of other mountains. 



In symmetry, in strength, in the vigour of her wing, 

 the acuteness of her vision, and the terrible clutch of 

 her talons, the golden eagle is superior to every other 

 bird ; and as her habitation is always in those time- 

 built palaces, the most lofty and inaccessible precipices, 

 there is sublimity in her dwelling; and though in 

 reality a long-lived bird, she has popularly gained a 

 sort of immortality, from the durable nature of her 

 abode. It appears to be one of the general provisions 

 of nature, that the most powerful destroyers of living 

 animals should have their favourite haunts in the most 

 lonely places ; and in this, the lion, the most powerful 

 of quadrupeds, and the golden eagle, the most vigorous 

 of birds, completely agree. There is, however, a won- 

 derful difference in the distances at which they can 

 discover their prey : the lion springs only a few yards, 

 while the eagle darts down from the mid-heaven, in 

 one perpendicular and accelerating stoop. 



