18 
BALD EAGLE. 
famished for xvant of prey, he disdains to feed on carrionf since we 
have ourselves seen the Bald Eagle, while seated on the dead car- 
cass of a horse, keep a whole flock of Vultures at a I’espectful dis- 
tance, until he had fully sated his own appetite. The Count has 
also taken great pains to expose the ridiculous opinion of Pliny, 
wlio conceived that the Ospreys formed no separate race, and that 
tliey 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, which engender great Vultures 
that have not the power of propagation,^ But, while labouring to 
confute these absurdities, the Count himself, in his belief of an oc- 
casional intercourse between the Osprey and the Sea Eagle, con- 
tradicts 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, which confines the amours 
of individuals to those of their own species only. That perversion 
of nature produced by domestication is nothing to the purpose. In 
no instance have I ever observed the slightest appearance of a con- 
trary conduct. Even in those birds which never build a nest for 
themselves, nor hatch their young, nor even pair, but live in a state 
of general concubinage ; such as the Cuckoo of the old, and the 
Cow Bunting of the new, continent ; there is no instance of a de- 
viation from this striking habit. I cannot therefore avoid con- 
sidering the opinion above alluded to, that “ the male Osprey by 
coupling with the female Sea Eagle produces Sea Eagles ; and 
that the female Osprey by pairing with the male Sea Eagle gives 
birth to Ospreys’’*!* or Fish-Hawks, as altogether unsupported by 
facts and contradicted by the constant and universal habits of the 
whole feathered race in their state of nature. 
The Sea Eagle is said by Salerne, to build on the loftiest oaks 
a very broad nest, into which it drops two large eggs, that are 
* Hist. Nat. lib. x, c. 3. ■]■ Buffon,vo1, I, p. 80. Trans. 
