GOLDEN EAGLE. 
1 1 
they have always been in mountainous districts, but only 
in one instance at any considerable elevation, and there 
it was a little cave or cell which appears to have offered 
advantages too great to be neglected. In every other 
case they have been upon a ledge or step, with rock 
rising quite close behind them, and often overhanging 
the nest so as to shelter it more or less. There is fre¬ 
quently a projecting shoulder at one side, and in all 
that I have seen there has also been a face of rock be¬ 
low, sometimes dipping down close, but, in other situa¬ 
tions, not till a distance of several yards from the outer 
edge of the nest; a man, upon whose word I can place 
implicit reliance, told me of an old nest which he also 
offered to show me, placed upon the ground at the foot 
of a rock rising out of a hill side, and near it, also upon 
the ground, the nest of a previous year. 
“ In the Orkney islands I was assured that an old 
woman had one season come unexpectedly upon the 
Golden Eagle’s eyrie, and walked off with the eggs in 
her apron. Generally there is both soil and vegetation 
upon the platform where the nest is placed, with not 
unfrequently a small tree growing in front of it. In 
many it is not more than twelve or twenty feet above 
the ground, and a man can easily climb to it; again, 
there is often a great precipice below, and very little 
rock above the..nest : one was so close to the top that I 
vaulted easily in and out-from the level ground above; 
near this in the same ravine were three nests of other 
years, all accessible from below without the aid of ropes; 
but it is generally through a narrow continuation of the 
ledge that the eyrie is most easily approached; sheep 
droppings once gave me a clue to a simple road out of 
one which I had had much difficulty in reaching, and 
into another some men and dogs followed me by a simi- 
