EAGLE ATTACKING MAN 63 



mountains has also been mutilated by them, so 

 that under certain circumstances of helplessness^ 

 by accident or illness, they might easily become 

 dangerous, just as rats are in similar circumstances. 



It is rare, however, for any birds to attack man 

 for food ; still, this would seem to be the motive 

 for the attacks made on men in the water by Alba^ 

 trosses, as in. the case where these sea-birds attacked; 

 the German sailors in the sea at our defeat of 

 German ships in the sea-fight off the Falklands ; 

 and no one with any wide knowledge of birds could 

 doubt that Eagles probably were in former times, 

 when they were more common and fire-arms less 

 so, very serious enemies to children. 



It must be remembered that only a very few 

 years ago a case was recorded in the Field in wldch. 

 a Golden Eagle attacked an adult in Scotland, 

 though in this case the motive was apparently 

 revenge, as the man, a gamekeeper, had rescued a 

 Grouse from it earlier on the same day. Hassel- 

 quist, also, in his " Travels in the Levant," published 

 in the eighteenth century, credits an Owl, which he 

 calls Strix orientalis, but which is apparently only 

 the Common Barn-Owl from his description and 

 attribution to it of building-haunting habits, with' 

 coming into houses in Syria at night, and destroying 

 babies if not carefully watched, 



I may say that on taking a little boy of two years 

 old with his parents to see the Owls at the Zoo 

 some years ago I noticed that all the large Eagle- 

 Owls abandoned their usual apathetic unseeing 



