and made off with two or three, before the others, or, indeed, the sportsmen, recovered from their astonishment. The golden eagle has been seen in Sicily to hunt in couples: one of the birds would make a loud rustling by a violent beating of its wings against bushes and shrubs, whilst the other remained in ambush at a short distance, watching for anything that might appear; if a rabbit or hare was driven out, it was immediately pounced upon, and the prey thus obtained was shared between the depredators.

Eagles are said to be very long lived. One that died in Vienna was stated to have lived in confinement one hundred and four years. From the great value attached by the North American Indians to an eagle's plume, which is considered equivalent in value to a fine horse, their hunters are continually on the look-out to catch or to kill these birds. Sometimes a hole is dug, and slightly covered, and there buried, as it were, an Indian will remain for days together, with a bird on his hand as a lure for the eagle; at other times, the carcass of a deer is displayed, and the indefatigable hunter will watch, rifle in hand, with equal patience in some neighbouring place of concealment, until his perseverance is rewarded with success.

A story is current on the plains of Saskatchewan, of a half-bred Indian, who was vaunting his prowess before a band of his countrymen, and wished to impress them with a belief of his supernatural and necromantic powers. In the midst of his florid harangue an eagle was observed suspended in the air directly over his head, upon which, pointing aloft with his dagger, which glistened brightly in the sun, he called upon the royal bird to come down. To his utter amazement, and to the consternation of the surrounding Indians, the eagle seemed to obey the charm; for instantly shooting down with the velocity of an arrow, he impaled himself on the point of the glittering weapon, which had, of course, been the object of attraction.

The distinguishing mark of a Chieftain in the Highland clan was an eagle's feather in the bonnet; and among the North American Indians, the same ornament is esteemed in the highest degree. The young Indian "brave" glories in

his eagle's plume, as the emblem of might and courage, and regards it as the most honourable decoration with which he can adorn himself. In 1734, Tomochichi, King of the Yammacrows, and several other Indian Chiefs, arrived in England, and were introduced to George II., at Kensington: on that occasion, Tomochichi presented to His Majesty a gift of eagles' plumes, being the most respectful gift he could offer, and concluded an eloquent speech in these words:"These are the feathers of the eagle, which is the swiftest of birds, and who flieth all round our nations. These feathers are a sign of peace in our land; and we have brought them over to leave them with you, O! great King, as a sign of everlasting peace."

The eagle-feathers are also attached to the calumets, or smoking-pipes, used in the celebration of their most solemn festivals: hence the bird has obtained the name of the "Calumet Eagle."

In some parts eagles play sad havoc with the young lambs, and occasionally with the herds also. That there is foundation for the following statement, made by Mr. Regnard, there can be no doubt; but, like the old tale of the gigantic Patagonians, it has not lost by repetition. The worthy traveller says, "There are also some birds which carry on a destructive warfare with the reindeer; and, among the rest, the eagle is extremely fond of the flesh of this animal. In this country great numbers of eagles are to be found, of such an astonishing size, that they often seize upon, with their claws, the young reindeer of three or four months old, and lift them up in this manner to their nests, at the tops of the highest trees. This particular immediately appeared to me very doubtful; but so true is it, that the guard employed to watch the young rein-deer is only used for this very purpose. All the Laplanders have given me the same information; and the Frenchman, who was our interpreter, assured me that he had seen many examples of it; and, that having one day followed an eagle which carried a young rein-deer from its mother's side to its own nest, he cut the tree at the foot, and that the half of the animal had already been eaten by the young

ones.

He seized the young eagles, and made the same use of them which they had made of his young deer; namely, he ate them. Their flesh was pretty good, but black, and somewhat insipid."

It would seem that in the Orkney Islands there were persons who professed to have the power, by means of a sort of incantation, of causing the plunderers to abandon their spoils; of which the following amusing account is given by Brand, who visited the Orkneys towards the end of the seventeenth century:

"There are," says that writer, "many eagles which destroy their lambs, fowls, &c.; for the preventing of which, some, when they see the eagles catching, or fleeing away with their prey, use a charm, by taking a string whereon they cast some knots, and repeat a form of words; which being done, the eagle lets her prey fall, though at a great distance from the charmer: an instance of which I had from a Minister, who told me that, about a month before we came to Zetland, there was an eagle that flew up with a cock, at Scalloway, which one of these charmers seeing, presently took a string, (her garter, it is supposed,) and casting some knots thereupon, with using the ordinary words, the eagle did let the cock fall into the sea, which was recovered by a boat that went out for that end."

In the Shetlands, the skŭa gull is held in particular regard by the natives, as from the inveterate hostility borne by them to the eagle and raven, the great enemy of the lambs, they serve as valuable protectors to these defenceless animals. No sooner does the eagle emerge from his eyrie amid the cliffs, than the skŭa descend upon him in bodies of three and four, and soon cause him to beat a precipitate retreat. An eye-witness describes such a scene. An eagle was returning to his eyrie in the western crags of Foula, and, contrary to his usual wary custom, was making a short cut by crossing an angle of land; not a bird was discernible, but suddenly the majestic flight of the eagle ceased, and he descended hurriedly, as if in the act of pouncing; in a moment five or six of the skŭa cleft the air with astonishing velocity; their wings were partly closed

and perfectly steady, as they thus shot through the air; they soon came up with the eagle, and a desperate engagement ensued. The skŭa never ventured to attack the enemy in front, but, taking a short circle around him, until his head and tail were in a direct line, the gull made a desperate stoop, and, striking the eagle on the back, darted up again almost perpendicularly, and fell to the rear. Three or four of these birds, passing in quick succession, harassed the eagle most unmercifully; the engagement continued, to the decided disadvantage of the eagle, till the whole were lost in the rocks.

There are many instances on record of infants being carried away by the larger birds of prey; and, in fact, there is scarcely a district infested by them which has not some tale of the sort. The following is contained in the first volume of the "Monasticon Anglicanum," and may possibly have been founded on fact, though probably embellished by the ancient chronicler :-

"Alfred, King of the West Saxons, went out one day a hunting, and, passing by a certain wood, heard, as he supposed, the cry of an infant from the top of a tree, and forthwith diligently inquired of the huntsmen what that doleful sound could be, and commanded one of them to climb the tree; when in the top of it was found an eagle's nest; and, lo! therein a pretty sweet-faced infant, wrapped up in a purple mantle, and upon each arm a bracelet of gold, a clear sign that he was born of noble parents. Whereupon the King took charge of him, and caused him to be baptized; and, because he was found in a nest, he gave him the name of Nestingum, and in after-time, having nobly educated him, he advanced him to the dignity of an Earl."

The crest of the Stanley family is an eagle preying upon a child, the origin of which is said by Dugdale, in his "Baronage of England," to be as follows:

"A certain Thomas de Lathom had an illegitimate son, called Oskytel; and, having no child by his own lady, he designed to adopt this Oskytel for his heir, but so that he himself might not be suspected for his father. Observing,

therefore, that an eagle had built her nest in a large spreadoak within his park at Lathom, he caused the child, in swaddling clothes, to be privily conveyed thither; and (as a wonder) presently called forth his wife to see it, representing to her that, having no male issue, God Almighty had thus sent him a male child, and so preserved that he looked upon it as a miracle; disguising the truth so artificially from her, that she forthwith took him with great fondness into the house, educating him with no less affection than if she had been his natural mother, whereupon he became heir to that fair inheritance. And that in token thereof not only his descendants, while the male line endured, but the Stanleys proceeding from the said Isabel, have ever since borne the child in the eagle's nest with the eagle thereon for their crest."

This, by the way, recalls to our mind a curious passage in that venerable book, Guillim's "Display of Heraldry," which alludes to a circumstance probably known to few of our readers:

"It is related that old eagles make a proof of their young by exposing them against the sunbeams, and such as cannot steadily behold the brightness are cast forth as unworthy to be acknowledged their offspring. In which respect William Rufus, King of this land, gave for his device an eagle looking against the sun, with this word Perfero, ('I endure it,') to signify that he was not in the least degenerated from his puissant father the Conqueror."

A deplorable circumstance occurred in Sweden, which has become matter of tradition from its melancholy interest. A young and blooming mother, whilst occupied in the fields, had laid her first-born, the pride of her heart, on the ground at a short distance from her. The babe was tranquilly sleeping, when suddenly a huge eagle swooped down, and carried him off in his talons. In vain the mother pursued with frantic cries; in vain she implored aid from others: for a considerable time the screams of the poor infant were heard, but they gradually became fainter and fainter in the distance, and the wretched mother saw her child no more. The shock was too much, her reason left its seat, and she, the