553 



rectrices are lightest, and have a creamy tinge, the outer ones being greyish in tinge ; under surface of 

 the body like the back, the bases of the feathers being fulvous brown, the terminal and central portions 

 being dark brown ; throat and chin with the bases of the feathers white ; bill blackish ; cere yellowish 

 brown ; iris dark brown ; feet yellowish. In size larger than the adult, measuring — culmen 36 inches, 

 wing 28 - 7, tail 15 - 5, tarsus 4-6. 



Nestling (Hungary, 25th April) . Covered all over with dull sooty down, with long tufts of whitish down 

 shooting through every here and there. 



Obs. In very old specimens of both sexes the iris is bright yellow, and the bill is yellow, the feet being 

 almost orange-yellow ; but these colours appear to be only assumed in the very fully adult stage of 

 plumage. The specimen I have figured, though in apparently fully adult dress, had neither assumed 

 the yellow iris, nor yet was the bill yellow, but the former was pale yellowish brown and the bill pale 

 bluish, except at the base and the lower mandible, where it was yellow. 



The European Sea-Eagle inhabits the whole of the Palsearctic Region, in the eastern portion 

 ranging southward to India and China, and in the western half down to North Africa. It does 

 not occur in the United States, though it is common in Greenland. 



Though some fifty years ago the Sea-Eagle was a resident in Great Britain, and not par- 

 ticularly rare in some localities, it has since then been nearly exterminated, and it is, com- 

 paratively speaking, but seldom that one is seen on our coasts. Professor Newton, in the new 

 edition of Yarrell's ' British Birds' which he is now editing, says that " it has been taken in most 

 districts of England, and even very near London, though less frequently in the midland than in 

 the maritime counties. On the east and south-east coast, though not numerous, it may be 

 regarded as a regular autumn and winter visitant — not that it confines itself to the sea-board, but 

 haunts also the larger waters and the extensive rabbit-warrens of the interior. I have but scanty 

 details respecting its occurrence on our south coast." Professor Newton thinks that the eyry in 

 the Culver cliff, where an Eaglet was, as recorded in Warner's 'Isle of Wight,' taken in 1780, 

 must have belonged to this species. Writing from Somerset, Mr. Cecil Smith informs me that 

 " it is occasionally met with as a wandering straggler, and has been taken on the Quantocks and 

 the Mendips, and also on the coast between Quantock-head and the mouth of the Parret ; it has 

 also been taken in the extreme western part of the county near the Devon boundary. All the 

 Somerset specimens appear to have been young birds before they had assumed the white tail, 

 which has occasionally led to their being recorded as Golden Eagles, which bird has never, I 

 believe, been taken in this county. When I was in Guernsey in November 1872, two White- 

 tailed Eagles were shot, one in Alderney, on the 2nd of November, and one at Bordeaux harbour, 

 Guernsey, on the 14th of November; like the generality of the Somerset specimens, these were 

 both young birds. Mr. Couch, the bird-stuffer at Guernsey, writing to me on the 10th of 

 November 1873, mentions, amongst other things, 'an Eagle seen, probably a White-tailed.'" 

 As stated by Mr. A. G. More, in his notes on the distribution of birds in Great Britain during 

 the breeding-season (Ibis, 1865, p. 8), Willughby mentions an eyry in Whinfield Park, West- 

 moreland; and in 1692, Mr. Aubrey was told that Eagles bred in the parish of Bampton, in the 

 same county (Corresp. of J. Bay, p. 257). Dr. Heysham tells us that this Eagle bred in Keswick 

 and Ullswater. The late Mr. W. Thompson observed a pair of Eagles in the English Lake 



