BALD EAGLE. 
17 
more or less diluted with white. In some the chin, breast and 
tail-coverts are of a deep brown ; in others nearly white ; and in 
all evidently unfixed and varying to a pure white. Their place 
and manner of building, on high trees, in the neighborhood of 
lakes, large rivers, or the ocean, exactly similar to the Bald Eagle, 
also strengthen the belief. At the celebrated cataract of Niagara 
great numbers of these birds, called there Gray Eagles, are con- 
tinually seen sailing high and majestically over the watery tumult, 
in company with the Bald Eagles, eagerly watching for the man- 
gled carcasses of those animals that have been hurried over the 
precipice, and cast up on the rocks below, by the violence of the 
rapids. These are some of the circumstances on which my sus- 
picions of the identity of these two birds are founded. In some 
future part of the work I hope to be able to speak with more cer- 
tainty on this subject. 
Were we disposed, after the 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 his- 
tory of the Eagle, the volumes of these writers, from Aristotle 
down to his admirer the Count de Bufibn, would furnish abundant 
materials for this purpose. But the author of the present work 
feels no ambition to excite surprise and astonishment at the ex- 
pense of truth, or to attempt to elevate and embellish his subject 
beyond the plain realities of nature. On this account, he cannot 
assent to the assertion, however eloquently made, in the celebrated 
parallel drawn by the French naturalist between the Lion and the 
Eagle, viz. that the Eagle, like the Lion, “ disdains the possession 
of that property which is not the fruit of his own industry, and re- 
jects with contempt the prey which is not procured by his own ex- 
ertions since the very reverse of this is the case in the conduct of 
the Bald and the Sea Eagle, who, during the summer months, ai’c 
the constant robbers and plunderers of the Osprey or Fish-Hawk, 
by whose industry alone both are usually fed. Nor that though 
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VOL. VII, 
