36 
EAGLES TRAINED FOR HAWKING. 
in good health. The freshness and vigour which they 
thus derive is alluded to in Henry IV. (Part I. Act iv. 
Sc. i):— 
“ Hotspur. Where is his son, 
The nimble-footed mad-cap Prince of Wales, 
And his comrades ?. 
Vernon. All furnish’d, all in arms ; . . 
Like eagles having lately bath’d.” 
The larger birds of prey are no less fond of washing, 
though they care so little for water to drink, that it has 
been erroneously asserted that they never drink. “ What 
I observed,” says the Abbe Spallanzani,* “ is, that eagles, 
when left even for several months without water, did not 
seem to suffer the smallest inconvenience from the want of 
it, but when they were supplied with water, they not only 
got into the vessel and sprinkled their feathers like other 
birds, but repeatedly dipped the beak, then raised the 
head, in the manner of common fowls, and swallowed 
what they had taken up. Hence it is evident that they 
drink.” 
In Persia, Tartary, India, and other parts of the East, 
the eagle was formerly, and is still to a certain extent, 
used for hunting down the larger birds and beasts. In 
the thirteenth century, the Khan of Tartary kept upwards 
of two hundred hawks and eagles, some of which had been 
trained to catch wolves ; and such was the boldness and 
* Dissertations,” vol. i. p. 173. 
