White-tailed Eagle. 61 



which my friend Major Spicer brought with him from Scotland ; 

 and very noble and very fierce he used to look in the large space 

 allotted him for a residence; nor was it safe for any stranger 

 to approach very near the iron bars of his abode. Sir 

 Kalph Payne-Gallwey,* than whom there can be no better 

 authority, says that, active and strong as he is, the Golden Eagle 

 cannot grasp with his foot so firmly as his white-tailed congener, 

 but seems rather more fitted to seize small animals on the 

 ground, and there hold them to eat on the spot ; and he adds 

 that in warm bright weather eagles are inactive, but when the 

 day is wild and boisterous they wheel continuously through the 

 sky, and appear to glory in the tempest. I have in my posses- 

 sion the foot, which I picked up from the road in Norway, in 

 1850, of what must have been in life a splendid specimen of the 

 Golden Eagle. Doubtless this foot had been cut off by the captor 

 of the bird, and accidentally dropped on its way to the authori- 

 ties, who, on its production, would pay the premium granted by 

 Government for the destruction of such birds of prey; in the 

 same spirit as, we are told by Montagu, that, in order to ex- 

 tirpate the Golden Eagle, there is a law in the Orkney Isles 

 which entitles any person who kills an eagle to a hen out of 

 every house in the parish in which it is killed. 



It is interesting and refreshing to learn, as I do from the Rev. 

 A. P. Morres, who appears to have excellent authority for the 

 statement, that the Golden Eagle in Scotland is not by any means 

 the rare bird whose speedy extermination has been prophesied 

 by some ; for there are from sixty to eighty of this species now 

 breeding in that country ; whereas of the Sea Eagle, which has 

 been generally supposed to be greatly more abundant, there are 

 now but twenty nests. It may seem strange and even incre- 

 dible to some that such a bird census can be taken with any 

 accuracy ; but to those who are familiar with gamekeepers and 

 their habits, and are aware of the importance attached to an 

 eagle's nest, whether its owner desires to protect or destroy it, 



' The Fowler in Ireland,' pp. 291305. 



