THE EAGLES 87 



eggs. "Frequently," says Mr. Ogil vie- Grant, "it carries 

 off nest and all in its talons, and examines the contents as 

 it sails lazily away." A stuffed specimen of this Eagle 

 may be seen in the South Kensington Museum. 



Another specimen preserved at the Museum is the 

 skin of an Eagle discovered only about a dozen years ago. 

 This is the GREAT FOREST EAGLE of the Philippines, 

 which Mr. John Whitehead made known in 1896.^ 



He took up his quarters in the dense forest of the 

 island of Samar, where many of the trees tower aloft to 

 a height of between 200 and 250 feet. As the tops are so 

 thick that even the fierce sunlight of the tropics cannot 

 pierce for more than thirty or forty feet down into the 

 waving masses of green leaves, all the animals that are able 

 to live up in the treetops do so — the monkeys, for instance 

 — while as for the birds, they dwell there as a matter of 

 course. It was to the treetops, therefore, that Mr. 

 Whitehead looked for a possible new discovery. 



The natives had told him of the existence of a huge 

 Eagle which preyed on the monkeys, so he watched day 

 after day. At last he sighted the bird and its mate (only 

 one pair was seen) and finally he shot the male bird. It 

 fell, but gripped a branch and hung till a native climbed 

 up to the dizzy network of boughs and brought it down. 

 Mr. Whitehead calculated that it weighed about 18 lbs. ! 



Not only its weight but its length is surprising ; its 

 wings are rather short, but its tail very long. Its beak is 

 much hooked, and " so compressed that the edges must cut 

 like a double-bladed knife." The huge claws are " specially 

 adapted for seizing and holding large animals with close 

 thick fur" — monkeys, for example. But as there are, in 



1 A specimen of this formidable Eagle — the first of its kind ever brought 

 alive to Europe — arri\ed at the London Zoo in the summer of 1909. 



