GOLDEN EAGLE. 



207 



The descriptions given of the Golden Eagle by systematic writers, 

 appear to correspond but little with the name. Willughby says that 

 " the small feathers of the whole body are a dark ferruginous or 

 chestnut colour." Linnaeus, that " the body is variegated with brown 

 or rusty." Latham, that " the head and neck are deep brown, the 

 feathers bordered with tawny, the hind part bright rust colour, body 

 dark brown." Bewick, that " the general colour is deep brown, mixed 

 with tawny on the head and neck." Fleming, that " the accuminated 

 feathers on the head and neck are bright rust colour, the rest of the 

 plumage dusky brown." Selby, that "the secondary quills are clouded 

 with hair-brown, broccoli-brown, and umber-brown ; crown of the head 

 and nape of the neck pale orange-brown, chin and throat dark umber- 

 brown ; vent pale reddish brown." Baron Cuvier, that " it is more or 

 less brown." Temminck, that " the young at the age of one or two 

 years have all the plumage of ferruginous or reddish brown, clear and 

 uniform on all parts of the body, and in proportion as they advance in 

 age the colours of the plumage become more embrowned (rembru- 

 nissent) ;" while BufFon alone says, " the plumage at first is white, 

 then faint yellow, and afterwards it becomes a bright copper colour." 

 Belon even ventures to infer that when Aristotle first used the term golden, 

 (xpwraeTbs), he did not mean that it was gilded, but only rather more 

 reddish than other species. 1 But on turning to the passage in Aris- 

 totle, we find that he says expressly that the "colour is yellow" 

 (xpwyua £av66s.) 2 



I can only reconcile these conflicting opinions by inferring, that as 

 the Golden Eagle is not by any means so often seen as the common 

 eagle, (Haliaetus albicilla, S a viGNY,)the latter has been confounded with 

 the former. During the summer of 1829, I saw an eagle kept in the 

 garden of Mr. Perkins, at Lee, in Kent, whose plumage fully merited 

 Aristotle's epithet of golden, for though it had little metallic lustre, it 

 had that peculiar shade of russet yellow which gold exhibits when alloyed 

 with copper, the feathers appearing, indeed, as if they had been powdered 

 with gold dust. Previous to this, I had seen both in menageries and 

 museums many birds called Golden Eagles, but without the slightest 

 claim to the title, which now first struck me as highly appropriate. In 

 the following August, I saw another bird of this species, at large, a league 

 or so above Bonn on the Rhine. It was beating about among the or- 

 chards, and on the look-out, no doubt, for a hare or a rabbit, to carry 

 to its eyry, which was probably situated on " the castled crag of 

 Drachenfels," immediately opposite, or some other precipice on the 



Belon, Oyseaux, p. 91. 



2 Aristotle, Hist. Anim. Ix. c. 32. 



