SEA EAGLE. 
43 
called there Gray Eagles, are continual]}^ seen sailing high and majesti- 
cally over the watery tumult, in company with the Bald Eagles, eagerly 
watchino- for the mangled carcasses of those animals that have been 
hurried over the precipice, and cast up on the rocks below, by the vio- 
lence of the rapids. These are some of the circumstances on which my 
suspicions of the identity of those tw-o birds are founded. In some future 
part of the work, I hope to be able to speak with more certainty on this 
subject. 
Were we disposed, after tlie 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 BufTon, 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 sulyect beyond the plain realities of nature. On this ac- 
count, he cannot assent to tlie assertion, however eloquently made, in 
the celebrated parallel draAvn l)y the French naturalist between the Lion 
and the Eagle, viz., that the Eagle, like the Lion, " disdains the posses- 
sion of that property which is not the fruit of his own industry, and 
rejects with contempt the prey which is not procured by his own exer- 
tions ;" since the very reverse of this is the case in the conduct of the 
Bald and tlie Sea Eagle, who, during the summer months, are the con- 
stant plunderers of the Osprey or Fish-Hawk, by whose industry alone 
both arc usually fed. Nor that tliough famished for want of i^rey, he 
disdains to feed on earrion," 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 ridicu- 
lous opinion of Pliny, Avho conceived that the Ospreys formed no sepa- 
rate 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, ivhich 
engender great Vultures that have not the potver of 'p-opagation."'^ But, 
while laboring 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 feathered race, in their natural state, 
than that chastity of attachment, wdiich confines the amours of indi- 
viduals to those of their own species only. That perversion of nature 
produced by domestication is nothing to the purpose. In no instance 
* Hist. Nat. lib. s., c. 3. 
