34 
FALCO OSSIFRAGUS. 
circumstance, corroborating these suspicions, is the 
variety that occurs in the colours of the sea eagle. 
Scarcely two of these are found to he alike, their 
plumage being 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 neighbourhood 
of lakes, large rivers, or the ocean, exactly similar to 
the bald eagle, also strengthens the belief. At the 
celebrated Cataract of Niagara, great numbers of these 
birds, called there gray eagles, are continually seen 
sailing* high and majestically over the watery tumult^ 
in company with the bald eagles, eagerly watching for 
the mangled 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 suspicions of the 
identity of those two birds are founded. In some future 
part of the work, I hope to be able to speak with more 
certainty on this subject. 
Were wc disposed, after the manner of some, to 
substitute, for plain matters of fact, all the narratives, 
conjectures, and fanciful theories of travellers, voj^agers, 
compilers, &c. relative to the history of the eagle, the 
volumes of these writers, from Aristotle down to his 
admirer, the Count de Buffon, 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 subject beyond the plain 
realities of nature. On this account, he cannot assent 
to the assertion, however eloquently made, in the cele- 
brated 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 rejects, with contempt, 
the prey which is not procured by his own exertions ; ” 
since the very reverse of this is the case, in the conduct 
of the bald and the sea eagle, who, during the summer 
