BALD EAGLE. 25 
Harbor, in New Jersey; but the garment seized upon by the 
Eagle giving way at the instant of the attempt, the life of the 
child was spared. I have heard of another instance, said to 
have happened at Petersburgh, in Georgia, near the Savannah 
River, where an infant, sleeping in the shade near the house, 
was seized and carried to the eyry near the edge of a swamp 
five miles distant, and when found, almost immediately, the 
child was dead. The story of the Eagle and child, in “The 
History of the House of Stanley,” the origin of the crest of 
that family, shows the credibility of the exploit, as supposed to 
have been effected by the White-tailed Eagle, so nearly related 
to the present. Indeed, about the year 1745 some Scotch 
reapers, accompanied by the wife of one of them with an 
infant, repaired to an island in Loch Lomond ; the mother laid 
down her child in the shade at no great distance from her, and 
while she was busily engaged in labor, an Eagle of this kind 
suddenly darted upon the infant and immediately bore it away 
to its rocky eyry on the summit of Ben Lomond. The alarm 
of this shocking event was soon spread; and a considerable 
party, hurrying to the rescue, fortunately succeeded in recover- 
ing the child alive. 
The Bald Eagle, like most of the large species, takes wide 
circuits in its flight, and soars at great heights. In these sub- 
lime attitudes he may often be seen hovering over waterfalls 
and lofty cataracts, particularly that of the famous Niagara, 
where he watches for the fate of those unfortunate fish and 
other animals that are destroyed in the descent of the tumul- 
tuous waters. 
All ornithologists of the present day agree in the opinion that 
Audubon’s “ Bird of Washington” was an immature Bald Eagle, 
——the difference in size and coloration accounting for the error. 
Nuttall, following Audubon, wrote of the two phases as of dis- 
tinct species; for it was not until about 1870 that washingtont was 
dropped from the lists. I have given the two biographies as they 
appeared in the original work, for together they form a good his- 
tory of the bird’s distinctive habits. The difference in habits noted 
is not due to difference of age, as might be supposed, but to the 
different conditions under which the birds chanced to be observed. 
