THE EAGLES 69 



of the bird and the fish have been drawn up out of the 

 loch or lake where they had struggled together and died. 



It was an ignoble fate for the king of birds, yet not so 

 fraught with suffering as that which befell a Highland 

 Eagle, which had managed somehow to get its leg caught 

 in a vermin-trap. Flapping and tugging, the great bird 

 had succeeded in pulling up the peg by which the trap was 

 secured and flying away with it bodily. The narrator of 

 the story, several weeks afterwards, happened to pass a 

 tree from one of the higher branches of which dangled a 

 curious object. He went nearer to examine it, and found 

 that it was the Eagle — hanging head downwards, quite 

 dead. The poor creature in flying away had got caught 

 and held by the dangling trap and chain, which were 

 entwined in the branches. Able neither to fly onward, nor 

 to shake off the burdensome weight, the poor bird had 

 simply starved, and at last weak and faint it had fallen 

 from its perch, and had died miserably. 



No chapter about Eagles would be thought complete — 

 especially by boys and girls — without one or two stories of 

 babies' being carried ofl" by this fierce bird of prey. 



Let me begin by saying that such events are really very 

 rare. In fact, were it not that tiny children are seldom 

 left out of doors altogether untended, one might expect 

 such a thing to happen more frequently. For an Eagle's 

 appetite is enormous, and when it has hungry nestlings to 

 feed as well, it will swoop on all manner of creatures, which 

 ordinarily it would not molest. And it will often do so 

 in the most plucky and daring way, carrying off bird or 

 animal under the very eyes of a man. 



Mr. Scott Rankin tells me that in Ross-shire, only a 

 year or two ago, one autumn day, a child was seized by 

 a Golden Eagle at the very door of a shepherd's cottage, 



