THE GOLDEN EAGLE. (_Aquila chrysáëtus._) In Scotland the living prey of the Golden Eagle, called there the Black Eagle, consists largely of mountain hares, but it takes lambs, grouse and other birds, sometimes even fawns and the young of the red-deer. In Hungary he sweeps down towards autumn from the higher regions to the vast plains, where he works havoc among the smaller wild animals, especially the hares. Only when driven by extreme hunger will he feed on carrion. On sunny days he soars circling above, with shrill squeal, until quite lost to sight, looking as it were into the very face of the sun. The breeding places of the Eagle are confined in Great Britain to the Highlands of Scotland and the islands of the Western side, and they are now protected by the owners of deer forests from the grouse preservers and sheep farmers who greatly thinned their numbers in former years. In Ireland very few pairs now remain; they were nearly all destroyed there by poison. They rarely visit England. So far from attacking any one who visits the eyrie or tries to take an egg or young, those who know them best say that they can be photographed without the least difficulty, in fact the old birds will soar high above, seemingly ignoring the presence of the intruders. A visitor to one eyrie, in which was a baby Eaglet, found there four grouse, part of a hare, and a monk stoat! the latter, as the gamekeeper said, being an unheard of thing. Sometimes an enraged Hoodie Crow has been seen in full chase of a Golden Eagle which had been too near the nest and young of the former. Mr. Seton Gordon says that when this Eagle is pursued by a small bird, the Mistle Thrush for instance, it never turns on its pursuer, although it could kill it with the greatest ease; but as he adds “in nature it seems to be the invariable rule that the pursued flies from the pursuer no matter what the relative sizes may be.” The Golden Eagle is now slightly on the increase in Scotland. It is a most interesting bird, the type of nobility and of valour. The naturalist with whom I collaborated over the signature, “A Son of the Marshes,” has told of two live Golden Eagles which were chained to stands just inside the courtyard of the old coaching inn at Sittingbourne, in Kent, when he was a boy, objects of wondering delight to himself and of much daily curiosity to the passengers on the coaches. They snatched up more than one cat that came too close to their stands after the meat that was given to them. Many poets have sung of the Golden Eagle: “On sounding pinion borne, he soars, and shrouds, His proud aspiring head among the clouds.” * * * * * “Soaring With upward pinions through the flood of day, And, giving full bosom to the blaze, gain on the sun.” * * * * * “Trying his young against its rays, To prove if they’re of generous breed, or base.”