8i 



islands. At that time of year they were perfectly 

 harmless on the ground, preying only on wounded 

 game or hares, and as they always left that quarter 

 before the breeding season their visits were 

 beneficial rather than otherwise. 



On several occasions after a large hare drive, 

 when going over the ground on the following day 

 to pick up the wounded and also to learn what 

 vermin were about I have observed them collected 

 in still larger bodies, a hundred or more being 

 scattered over the hills within view, having been 

 drawn from all the surrounding moors by the 

 prospect of abundant food. 



They were at all times so eager to make a 

 meal off the dead game with which we baited our 

 traps that I have known between two and three 

 hundred captured in a single season, not that we 

 wished to destroy them, but simply that they 

 positively insisted on getting into the traps which 

 we were forced to keep set in order to check the 

 increase of more destructive vermin. 



In the breeding season there is no doubt that 

 they are injurious to game, being very partial to 

 eggs. 



The specimens in the case were trapped in 

 Glenlyon in Perthshire in September, 1866. 



See " Bough Notes," Vol. I., Plate 25. 



Before game preserving became so universal, Eavens 

 bred in many inland localities throughout England. I have 

 been shewn by the late Mr. Norman Thrale the tree in 

 Brocket Hall Park, Hertfordshire, where a pair of Eavens 

 had nested from time immemorial up to about fifty years ago. 

 He had two specimens of the bird obtained at the same place 

 in his collection. By his death in 1876, the race of yeomen 

 farmers became as extinct in the neighbourhood as the 

 Eavens. Mr. and Mrs. Thrale of Johnsonian and Brighton 

 celebrity were closely connected with his family. Ed. 



