White-tailed Eagle. 59 



sportsman no longer the honoured, the petted, and the prized, 

 but the special objects of vengeance, the marked victims of the 

 gun and the snare. And yet, though no longer trained for the 

 chase, but hunted down by the preserver of game as his most 

 deadly foes, who can forbear to admire the symmetry and 

 strength of body, the boldness, the courage, the sagacity, of this 

 whole family? Who can withhold admiration at their noble 

 bearing, their velocity of flight, the keenness of their sight, the 

 gracefulness of their evolutions in the air ? But as I am not 

 writing a panegyric on falcons, but only a plain history of them, 

 I will proceed at once to enumerate the species which have 

 occurred in this county. 



1. THE WHITE-TAILED EAGLE (ffaliceet'us albicilla). 



First and foremost in the ranks of the Falconidse stands the 

 lordly eagle, no less the king of birds than the lion is allowed to 

 rank monarch of quadrupeds. The strength and courage of this 

 genus so commended it to the heathen poets that they made it 

 the attendant of Jupiter, and declared that alone of the feathered 

 tribes it could brave the thunderbolt, or gaze with fixed eye at the 

 sun's dazzling orb ; for the same reasons the Romans, Assyrians 

 and Persians adopted it as their standard in ancient times, and 

 it forms the crest or emblem of monarchy in Russia, Prussia, 

 Austria, France, and other empires of modern days. Its 

 longevity, too (for it has been proved to live above a hundred 

 years), and its love of solitude, combine to give it dignity and 

 majesty ; so that in appearance and habits, as well as by general 

 consent, it is allowed to be a 'right royal bird.' In Great 

 Britain, the cliffs of Scotland and Ireland and the wildest parts 

 of our sea-coast are the abode of the eagles ; and there, on the 

 most inaccessible rocks, and on the edges of the most dizzy 

 precipices, they place their eyries, and from thence they sally 

 forth in quest of prey, and goodly and ample and of great variety 

 is the stock of game, in addition to an occasional lamb or fawn, 

 with which they supply their young, as the rocks adjoining theifc 



