i8 
BIRDS OF PREY. 
The ferocious and savage nature of the Eagle, in an unre- 
claimed state, is sometimes displayed in a remarkable manner. 
A peasant attempted to rob an eyry of this bird situated at the 
Lake of Killarney : for this purpose he stripped and swam over 
to the spot in the absence of the old birds j but on his return, 
while yet up to the chin in water, the parents arrived, and 
missing their young, instantly fell on the unfortunate plunderer 
and killed him on the spot. 
There are several well-authenticated instances of their carry- 
ing off children to their nests. In 1737, in the parish of 
Norderhougs, in Norway, a boy over two years old, on his way 
from the cottage to his parents, at work in the fields at no great 
distance, fell into the pounce of an Eagle, who flew off with 
the child in their sight, and was seen no more. Anderson, in 
his history of Iceland, says that in that island children of four 
or five years of age have occasionally been borne away by 
Eagles ; and Ray relates that in one of the Orkneys a child of 
a year old was seized in the talons of this ferocious bird and 
carried about four miles to its nest, but the mother, knowing 
the place of the eyry, followed the bird, and recovered her child 
yet unhurt. 
The Common, or Ring-tailed Eagle, is now found to be the 
young of the Golden Eagle. These progressive changes have 
been observed by Temminck on two living subjects which he 
kept for several years. 
The Golden Eagle is generally considered to be a rare bird in 
New England and Canada, and, indeed, throughout the settled dis- 
tricts everywhere ; though examples have been taken the continent 
over, from Greenland to Mexico, and west to the Pacific. 
