5270 Birds. 



they floated along, on almost motionless wing, at no very great height 

 above the ground : it may be imagined with what intense pleasure I 

 threw myself on the grass, and how eagerly I watched every motion of 

 those glorious birds, so much larger than any I had ever seen on the 

 wing, and howl strained my eyes to gaze after them when they soared 

 out of sight, and how I hailed their reappearance with delight, and 

 how loath I was to leave the spot over which they continued to hover, 

 when fear of missing the carnage compelled me to go on. The recol- 

 lection of that morning on the Splugen will never fade from my 

 memory; the scenery so wild and desolate, and so well harmonizing 

 with the only living creatures to be seen, monarchs indeed of those 

 alpine heights, — a vast domain of rock and ice and snow. That is the 

 only occasion on which T ever saw what I believe to be eagles of a 

 first class order, for though I have seen many a large falcon, hawk 

 and buzzard in Germany, Switzerland and Norway, I have never seen 

 auy bird at all to be compared in size with the two noble creatures 

 soaring as guardians over the Splugen Pass : what induces me so con- 

 fidently to pronounce these birds Lammergeyer, is the sight of a fine 

 specimen of that bird, not long after, in the Museum of Berne, which, 

 suspended from the ceiling with outstretched wings, must at once, from 

 its vast extent of wing, arrest the attention of every observer, and the 

 birds I saw on the Splugen appeared to me to be precisely similar to 

 it (as far as I could judge) in size, shape and general appearance. 



The Eagle Owl {Bubo maximus). Very different, but not less wild 

 or awful in character, was the scene of my meeting with the eagle 

 owl : it was in the Canton Graubunden (Grisons), and close to the 

 entrance of the Via Mala, that wondrous gorge, four miles in length, 

 through which the infant Rhine forces its way, and far above which a 

 road has been constructed with amazing engineering skill, sometimes 

 as a tunnel, sometimes as a mere shelf in the side of the cliff, now 

 crossing the terrific chasm below by a bridge of a single arch, 400 feet 

 above the torrent, now recrossingby another bridge at a no less giddy 

 height. It was here, in this tremendous gorge, perhaps one of the 

 grandest in the world, the cliffs on either side 1600 feet high, but 

 frequently not above ten yards, and in some places not eight yards 

 apart, that the eagle owl now in my collection had its home : well 

 calculated indeed must this dark and sileut chasm have been for the 

 retreat of the king of owls ; shut out from all rays of the sun, inac- 

 cessible till recently to any human being or four-footed creature, — in 

 perpetual silence, save the murmuring of the tiny Rhine in its uneven 

 bed many hundred feet below, — in perpetual shade, solitude and 



