THE llIKG-TAILED AND GOLDEN EAGLES. 44.^ 
pig in her taloiiS, which she dropt alive upon his firing at 
her. We have even a tradition here of an eagle's having 
taken up a child from behind some reapers, in the parish 
of Orphir, and carried it to her nest in Hoy ; but by the 
assiduity of the people, who immediately followed her, the 
child was rescued unhurt 
The Work from which the preceding extract is taken^ 
was executed by one who passed more than twenty years 
in the Orkney Islands, and who, possessed of more than 
usual zeal for the study of natural history,^ and encouraged 
by the friendship and patronage of Mr Pennant and 
Sir Joseph Banks, was anxious to render the result of his 
observations as complete and comprehensive as possible. 
But there is no mention whatever made of the Golden Eagle 
as an inhabitant of the Island of Hoy ^ or any of the Ork^ 
ney Islands. 
The well-known circumstance of the extreme attachment 
of old eagles to the places of their accustomed incubation, 
and the fact alluded to by Mr Selby, of their driving off 
their young to shift for themselves elsewhere, as soon as 
sufficiently fledged, would, of course, in these instances of 
Jura and Hoy, increase, instead of diminishing, the pro- 
bability of encountering the mature and perfect bird, rather 
than the young f. I am altogether unable to account for 
• The same story is told in a somewhat different manner by Sir Robert 
SiBBALO in his Scotia Jllustrata, 
f I hope I shall be excused for transcribing in a note the following fine 
description of the above-mentioned trait in the character of the parent eagle. 
It is by Thomson, whom Pennant used to call the Naturalisfs Poet 
High from the summit of a craggy cliff, 
Hung o*er the deep, such as amazing frowns 
On utmost Kilda's shore, whose lonely race 
Resign the setting sun to Indian worlds, 
