176 FOEEST CREATURES. 



a burst his broad pinions are again unfolded; his 

 downward progress is arrested, and he sweeps away 

 horizontally, smoothly, and without effort. He has been 

 seen to do this when carrying a sheep of twenty-six 

 pounds weight in his talons ; and from so giddy a 

 height that both the eagle and his booty were not 

 larger than a sparrow. It was directly over a wall of 

 rock in which the eyrie was built ; and while the speck 

 in the clouds was being examined, and doubts enter- 

 tained as to the possibility of its being the eagle, down 

 he came headlong, every instant increasing in size, 

 when, in passing the precipice, out flew his mighty wings ; 

 the sheep was flung into the nest, and on the magnifi- 

 cent creature moved, calmly and unflurried as a bark 

 sails gently down the stream of a river. 



Christopher North " in his Aviary " alludes to a dia- 

 logue in Sir Humphry Davy's '* Salmonia " between 

 Poietes and Halieus about an eagle. " Look at the 

 bird, she dashes into the water, falling like a rock, and 

 raising a column of spray : she has fallen from a great 

 height ! And now she rises again into the air ; — what 

 an extraordinary sight ! " On this Christopher observes, 

 " An eagle does not, when descending on her prey, fall 

 like a rock. There is nothing like the vis inertice in 

 her precipitation." But as this " falling like a rock 

 from a great height " tallies exactly with what others 

 have witnessed as well as Poietes, there is no reason for 



