''^■^'SHJ^^ RING-TAILED AND GOLDEN EAGLES. 439 
This terminates what I had to state in the way of objec- 
tion to the second opinion. I come now to the third opi« 
nion (that of Mr Selby), which reverses the preceding 
one, and maintains that the Ring-tailed Eagle is not the 
parent, but the young of the Golden Eagle. This view of 
the subject accounts, to a certain extent, for the much 
greater frequency of the one than the other, and in so far 
it escapes the objection arising from the disparity in point 
of numbers, which I deem insuperable in regard to the se- 
cond opinion ; but in every other respect I incline to view 
it as even more improbable, or at least more inconsistent 
with the known analogies, than that opinion itself. 
In a small journal which I kept during a tour in Swit- 
zerland a good many years ago, there are the following 
notes on this subject, afterwards inserted in my remarks on 
the genus Falco, and referred to in Mr Selby's recent ob- 
servations. 
In the celebrated collection of Swiss birds, formed by 
the late M. Speungli of Berne, the specimen of the Golden 
Eagle resembles in all respects that in the Parisian cabinet | 
but the bird in the latter collection, supposed to be the 
young of that species, by some of the French naturalists, 
though described as a distinct species by preceding writers 
on ornithology, under the name of F, Jhlvus, or Ring- 
tailed Eagle, is not the same as the young of the Golden 
Eagle preserved by M, Spiiungli. 
^' This, conjoined with some other circumstances^ induces 
me in this instance to doubt the accuracy of the Parisian 
nomenclature. 
In the Swiss specimen, which is known to be the young 
of the Golden Eagle, t7ie tail has no appearance of a ring 
or hand at the base. The feathers there are bluish-black, 
barred with brown and ash colour, the overlying central 
tail-feathers being likewise barred^ but the ground colour 
