232 
The Animal-Lore of Shahspeares Time. 
greatnesse, and of such a force, that not only they will open a sheep 
and eate it hut also a whole calfe.” (Purchas, vol. iii. p. 965.) 
Though denied by modern scientific classification the 
honour of heading the list of the feathered 
Ea&le * tribes, the Eagle held in earlier and more 
poetic times the same position among birds that the lion 
occupied among beasts, and was in consequence the chosen 
emblem of royalty in many countries. 
The lofty flight of the eagle, beyond the range of any 
but the most practised archer, and quite out of the reach 
of the clumsy guns of this period, together with the 
inaccessible crags which it frequented, gave it com¬ 
parative immunity from disturbance. The eagle must 
have therefore been far more common than at present. 
Sir Thomas Browne says that the great eagle was not 
met with in Norfolk, though several of the fen eagles 
were found there. Derricke, in his Image of Irelande , 
describes— 
“ A mighty fowle, a goodlie birde. 
Whom men doe eagle call, 
This builds her nest in highest toppe 
Of all the oken tree ; 
Or in the craftiest place, whereof 
In Irelande manie be.” 
Leland, in his Itinerary , tells us that an eagle built its 
nest every year on the side of the rock on which the 
Castle of Dinas Brane, near Chester, was built. This 
castle was, at the time he wrote, in ruins. Robert Chester 
speaks of— 
“ The princely eagle of all birds the king, 
For none but she can gaze against the sunne, 
Her eye-sight is so cleare, that in her flying 
She spies the smallest beast that ever runne, 
As swift as gun-shot using no delay, 
So swiftly doth she flie to catch her pray. 
