SEPT. SEA-EAGLE — SEA-TROUT. 289 



can feed on its foul prey, undisturbed and unseen 

 by human eye for months together. Like the 

 golden eagle, this bird sometimes so gorges itself 

 with food as to become helpless, and if then met 

 with, may be knocked down by a stick, or captured 

 alive before it can rise from the ground — a sad and 

 ignoble fate for the king of birds I After all, the 

 eagle is but a sorry representative of royalty and 

 kingly grandeur ; for although his flight is noble 

 and magnificent, and his strength and power asto- 

 nishing, there is a cruelty and treachery about the 

 disposition of the bird which render it unfit to be 

 educated and trained like the peregrine and other 

 falcons ; nor does it ever become attached to its 

 keeper. 



On the 28th of September the last house-swallow 

 took his departure from this neighbourhood, although 

 the season was so fine that there were several nests 

 of young greenfinches about the garden even so late 

 as the 30th of the month, and a wood-pigeon was 

 sitting on its eggs in an ash tree close to the house. 



During the latter weeks of the fishing season 

 (which legally ends on the 15th of September in all 

 the northern rivers), the lower pools of the Findhorn 

 are full of an excellent small sea-trout, locally 

 called the finnock. My opinion is that the "fin- 

 nock " is the grilse, or young of the common sea- 



VOL. I. O 



