04 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



8.25. — The other Eagle passes, at a height, and I see him 

 again, thus sailing, a little while afterwards, farther off. At 

 10.15 he again appears, floating grandly in the high air. It 

 would appear to be the general habit for the one bird to keep 

 on guard whilst the other sits. But this is not constant, 

 for during the whole time of setting up the tent yesterday — it 

 can hardly have been less than two hours — the non-sitting 

 bird was away. Had it been anywhere in the neighbourhood — 

 anywhere, that is, but far away — when we came the second 

 time, it must have seen us, and would no doubt have kept, for 

 some time, at least, near about — as construed in its own wide 

 way — in a state of disquietude, as it did before. 



Just a little before 1 p.m. (during most of the interval I have 

 been asleep) the sitting bird — the bird then sitting, that is to 

 say — comes off the nest. For a moment or two after its first 

 float upwards, it raises the wings, sinks the legs, suspends the 

 motive impulse, and appears to go through the actions of stretch- 

 ing itself, in the air, after the long hours of incubation — for I 

 doubt not it has been on the nest all the while. It then floats, 

 in its habitual manner, and, being joined by its mate from over 

 the crest of the cliff-line, the two sweep and circle in the most 

 magnificent manner. Nothing has ever been said or imagined, 

 or could be said or imagined, to rival in, descriptive force, the 

 actuality of grace, power, and majesty exhibited in the flight of 

 these birds. It is a thing so superb and beautiful to see — now 

 in the midst of an azure sky and air flooded with sunlight, over 

 waters as blue and as bright — that, seeing it, one wonders how 

 anyone who ever had the like grace vouchsafed him could 

 wilfully do, or wish to do, anything to diminish the numbers of 

 so grand and glorious a being. Simply for the purpose of keep- 

 ing such beauty in the world, there might well be societies to 

 protect it, even though not one in ten— or ten thousand — of 

 their members knew of it other than by repute ; just as one 

 might worthily join such a body, to save the great sculptures of 

 antiquity from destruction, though one never had seen or were 

 likely to see very many of them. That such a sight should 

 cease out of the world makes the heart, as one gazes on it, sick 

 to think upon. Still they float, and in a sky that might overarch 

 Mount Olympus. Magnificent, however, as is the flight of the 



