156 WILD LIFE IN CHINA. 



only in her outward appearance but in all her moods. We 

 see the eagle in swift descent, the fall of the thunderbolt 

 hardly eclipsing it. We see it in attack, eye flashing, 

 feathers ruffling, talons ready. Then it appears in softer 

 mood, when the breeding season has arrived, and there are 

 chicks to feed. Such pictures can be drawn only in the open 

 air, coloured only under the dome of the sky, and finished 

 only by one in entire accord with life in every phase. We 

 have a good deal of sympathy with the impatience with 

 which practical naturalists like Air. Roosevelt sometimes 

 receive the humanized portraits of their feathered or furred 

 friends reeking of the midnight oil. 



The eagle with the fawn-coloured lower parts, H. 

 fidviventer, or Aquila leucoiypha, is also a visitant to the 

 Chinese Empire, and like many of its relatives pays toll in the 

 form of primary or tail feathers for the making of fans. The 

 Chinese in some parts of the country are particularly fond 

 of fans of this description. One other bird may be mentioned 

 in this chapter, Bonelli's hawk-eagle, Xisaetiis fasciafiis, of 

 which the Shanghai Museum has a specimen, though I cannot 

 find it under the same name in David. For size it may certainly 

 rankwith the eagles, since it attains a total length of 36 inches, 

 and is thus about two-thirds the size of the golden eagle. In 

 Indiaitiscolloquially known as the "peacock-killer," peacocks 

 being wild in that favoured land. IBut it takes pigeons and 

 other birds of like size. Water-fowl, too, it particularly liices. 



The true eagles demand a chapter to themselves. 



