WHITE-HEADED, OR BALD EAGLE. 
95 
the other, displaying in these rencontres the most elegant and 
sublime aerial evolutions. The unencumbered Eagle rapidly 
advances, and is just on the point of reaching his opponent, 
when, with a sudden scream, probably of despair and honest 
execration, the latter drops his fish : the Eagle, poising himself 
for a moment, as if to take a more certain aim, descends like 
a whirlwind, snatches it in his grasp ere it reaches the water, 
and bears his ill-gotten booty silently away to the woods. 
These predatory attacks, and defensive manoeuvres of the 
Eagle and the Fish Hawk, are matters of daily observation 
along the whole of our sea board, from Georgia to New 
England, and frequently excite great interest in the spectators. 
Sympathy, however, on this, as on most other occasions, 
generally sides with the honest and laborious sufferer, in 
opposition to the attacks of power, injustice, and rapacity — 
qualities for which our hero is so generally notorious, and 
which, in his superior, man, are certainly detestable. As for 
the feelings of the poor fish, they seem altogether out of the 
question. 
When driven, as he sometimes is, by the combined courage 
and perseverance of the Fish Hawks, from their neighbour- 
hood, and forced to hunt for himself, he retires more inland, 
in search of young pigs, of which he destroys great numbers. 
In the lower parts of Virginia and North Carolina, where the 
inhabitants raise vast herds of those animals, complaints of this 
kind are very general against him. He also destroys young 
lambs in the early part of spring ; and will sometimes attack 
old sickly sheep, aiming furiously at their eyes. 
In corroboration of the remarks I have myself made on the 
manners of the Bald Eagle, many accounts have reached me 
from various persons of respectability, living on or near our 
sea coast : the substance of all these I shall endeavour to 
incorporate with the present account. 
Mr John L. Gardiner, who resides on an island of three 
thousand acres, about three miles from the eastern point of 
Long Island, from which it is separated by Gardiner’s Bay, 
