CHAPTER V. 



§irtrs. 



r I IHOUGH one might not unnaturally imagine that 

 -*- birds of every kind would enliven the vast tracts of 

 wood clothing the face of the country, the Canadian forest 

 slumbers in everlasting and almost oppressive silence; 

 and even beyond its precincts the general impression 

 produced on my own mind was rather that of the defi- 

 ciency than the number and variety, of the feathered 

 tribes, as compared with those of Great Britain and 

 other parts of the world; though some of the species 

 and varieties were both new and interesting. 



Few sights of the kind can weU be more so, than that 

 of the great- whitehead ed-eagle* on the wing: a spec- 

 tacle I had the gratification of witnessing in the neigh- 

 bourhood of the Falls. It was a bright sunny morning 

 when we suddenly descried it floating almost overhead, 

 with an immense expanse of wing, and apparently sus- 

 pended motionless in the air. As we stood and watched 



Haliaetm leucocephalus. 



