THE SEA-EAGLE. 139 



were different. The young is often described as the ossifrage 

 or " bone breaker/' or the sea eagle, and the mature bird as 

 the cinereous eagle, or white tailed eagle. 



In the breeding season both old and young (for it is pro- 

 bable that all birds which take three or four years before 

 they arrive at their mature plumage breed before then,) are 

 found in wild situations, chiefly on rocky places near the sea 

 or the larger inland waters. Whenever the shores are broken, 

 bold, and rocky, and at the same time thinly inhabited, these 

 eagles may be found as breeders, and often as general resi- 

 dents. They are seldom seen on the low shores of the agri- 

 cultural parts of Scotland, though it is said that, in the south, 

 they have been observed near St. Abb's Head. On the east 

 coast they are not met with again, till the wild shore and 

 equally wild adjoining district between Stonehaven and 

 Aberdeen, is arrived at. Thence to the Ord of Caithness 

 they are few; but they are common there, and also around 

 the whole of the rocky and indented coast on the north and 

 west, and in both the northern and the western isles. 



In the western part of Ross, about Lochbroon and Loch 

 Maree, they are very abundant, the country being as well 

 adapted to their habits, as the bold cliffs of the eastern 

 Grampians are to the habits of the golden eagle. 



The aspect of the country there is as wild as can well be 

 imagined. Dreary black morasses on the heights, which pre- 

 sent little save peat earth and pools of water; precipitous 

 rocks, rifted into all manner of shapes, and often rising into 

 sublime precipices and peaks; a shore, embayed and torn by 

 the sea, till it seems an absolute fringe ; arms of the sea full 

 of jutting head-lands; lakes studded with the most pic- 

 turesque islets; a sky, which is either dripping or pouring 

 almost all the days of the year, so that the people are abso- 

 lutely aquatic, and are said to catch cold whenever they 

 come so far eastward as to get dry ; a temperature as vari- 



