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BALD EAGLE.* 

 FALCO LEUCOCEPHALUS, 

 [Plate XXXVL] 



IN Mr. Wilson's history of the Bald Eagle, he confidently 

 asserts that it is the same species as the Sea Eagle, in a different 

 stage of color. In his account of the latter,t he adduces additional 

 reasons for his belief, which is at variance with the opinions of the 

 most respectable naturalists of Europe. We have no hesitation, 

 from our own experience, in pronouncing these birds to be the 

 same; and consider it unnecessary to add any thing further on the 

 subject, as the reasoning of Mr. Wilson is conclusive. 



Our author, vol. vii, page 19, describes an Eagle's nest, which 

 he visited, in company with the editor, on the eighteenth of May, 

 1812. It was then empty; but from every appearance a brood 

 had been hatched and reared in it that season. The following 

 year, on the first day of March, a friend of ours took from the 

 same nest three eggs, the largest of which measured three inches 

 and a quarter in length, two and a quarter in diameter, upwards 

 of seven in circumference, and weighed four ounces five drams 

 apothecaries weight; the color a dirty yellowish white — one was 

 of a very pale bluish white ; the young were perfectly formed. 

 Such was the solicitude of the female to preserve her eggs, that 

 she did not abandon the nest vmtil several blows, with an axe, 

 had been given the tree. 



In the History of Lewis and Clark's Expedition, we find the 

 following account of an Eagle's nest, which must have added not 



^ See vol. iv, p. 89. 

 VOL. IX. 



f vol. vii, p. 16. 



K k 



