SEA EAGLE. 3x3 



Were we disposed, after the manner of some, to substitute 

 for plain matters of fact all the narratives, conjectures, and 

 fanciful theories of travellers, voyagers, compilers, &c, relative 

 to the history of the eagle, the volumes of these writers, from 

 Aristotle down to his admirer, the Count de Buffon, would 

 furnish abundant materials for this purpose. But the author 

 of the present work feels no ambition to excite surprise and 

 astonishment at the expense of truth, or to attempt to elevate 

 and embellish his subject beyond the plain realities of nature. 

 On this account he cannot assent to the assertion, however 

 eloquently made, in the celebrated parallel drawn by the 

 French naturalist between the lion and the eagle, viz., that 

 the eagle, like the lion, " disdains the possession of that pro- 

 perty which is not the fruit of his own industry, and rejects 

 with contempt the prey which is not procured by his own 

 exertions ; " since the very reverse of this is the case in the 

 conduct of the bald and the sea eagle, who, during the summer 

 months, are the constant robbers and plunderers of the osprey, 

 or fish hawk, by whose industry alone both are usually fed. 

 Nor that, " though famished for want of prey, he disdains to 

 feed on carrion" since we have ourselves seen the bald eagle, 

 while seated on the dead carcass of a horse, keep a whole 

 flock of vultures at a respectful distance until he had fully 

 sated his own appetite. The Count has also taken great pains 

 to expose the ridiculous opinion of Pliny, who conceived that 

 the ospreys formed no separate race, and that they proceeded 

 from the intermixture of different species of eagles, the young 

 of which were not ospreys, only sea eagles ; " which sea eagles," 

 says he, " breed small vultures, which engender great vidtures, 

 that have not the 'power of propagation." * But, while labour- 

 ing to confute these absurdities, the Count himself, in his 

 belief of an occasional intercourse between the osprey and the 

 sea eagle, contradicts all actual observation, and one of the 

 most common and fixed laws of nature ; for it may be safely 

 asserted, that there is no habit more universal among the 

 * Hist. Nat. lib. x. c. 3. 



