170 FOREST CREATURES. 



the eagle carniot get near them, for fear of injuring 

 his wings. Sometimes, too, they will take shelter 

 around or under a large fragment of stone, determined 

 to defend themselves to the last ; but into a warfare of 

 this sort the eagle has no intention of entering. Among 

 those stones and clefts may lurk a danger he cannot 

 see and had not calculated on; so he leaves them, 

 however unwillingly, to look elsewhere for a kid in a 

 situation so exposed that, without stop or stay, he may 

 clutch it as he skims by within a foot of the ground. 

 And so he often knows the pangs of hunger. It is 

 only when driven to extremity that an eagle will de- 

 scend upon the earth and battle with his prey. It is 

 contrary to his instinct to do so. The air seems to be 

 his peculiar element, and earth an uncongenial spot, 

 and, moreover, full of pitfalls : it is, too, rendered 

 doubly dangerous by being the abode of man. Of him 

 the eagle has, in common with all wild animals, an 

 insurmountable dread.* Here also he would have to 



* Stories are told of persons being attacked by eagles when plundering 

 tbeir nest. Count Arco is inclined very much to doubt their truth. 

 He asserts that the eagle is as much afraid of man as other wild 

 creatures. And, indeed, his own experience seems to prove the correct- 

 ness of his opinion. Once when in the neighbourhood of an eyrie, the 

 parent bird swooped down towards him, but did not come nearer than 

 eighty or ninety yards, though nothing was done to hinder it from ap- 

 proaching. On another occasion, he was within a dozen feet of the nest 

 where the eaglet was ; the old bird retmnied while he was thus ap- 

 proaching the eyrie, and came suddenly upon him ; but instead of at- 



