2 NATURE AND WOODCRAFT. 



clean-cut figures, their bold dash, and glorious 

 eyes ! 



The Lake hills long offered an asylum not 

 only to Eagles, but to all the larger birds of 

 prey; aDd these commonly built among them. 

 Wordsworth and Wilson mention the Golden 

 Eagle as breeding in the Lake District; and 

 in their journals, Gray the poet, and Davy 

 speak — the one of seeing an eyrie robbed, 

 the other of watching the birds themselves. 

 De Quincey has also a note of personal obser- 

 vation. Eaven Crag, the high hills above 

 Keswick, Thirlmere, and Borrowdale, are sites 

 of former eyries. It is asserted by a shepherd 

 of the district that these Eagles, during the 

 breeding season, destroyed a lamb daily, to say 

 nothing of the carnage made on hares, par- 

 tridges, pheasants, grouse, and the waterfowl 

 that inhabit the lakes. 



At the places above mentioned, the farmers 

 and dalesmen were careful to plunder the 

 eyries, but not without considerable risk of 

 life or limb to the assailant. In one case, 

 a man was lowered from the summit of pre- 

 cipitous rocks by a rope of fifty fathoms, and 

 was compelled to defend himself from the 



