Page:Monthly scrap book, for March.pdf/6

 6              THE MONTHLY

thews, almost as thick as a man's wrist, and mea- suring, in the stuffed state, as near as may be, three feet high. Her son is of inferior height and strength, both from his sex and the captivity he has endured; for I need hardly remark, that female birds of prey are larger than the males--an anomaly certainly in the history of the species, but at the same time, a wise provision of Nature, seeing that the mother has most to do in catering for her cal- low young. The live eagle at Cairnsmuir retains all his instinct unimpaired. When I saw him last year, he was in tolerable feather, hopping about and facing his visitors with the greatest boldness; and like all the tribe, he seems to have an eye that never cowers--at least from fear. Though his food is rarely stinted, he likes best to kill his own meat, and if a domesticated fowl happen to stray within his range, its doom is fixed and its fate sealed. Instantly it is severed into a number of         fragments, with a dexterity, no carver could equal, though the head and brains are always eaten first, as affording the most delicious morsel. The prac- tice followed by some of skinning hares and rabbits before surrendering them to birds of prey, is as un- wise as it is unnecessary. In his natural state, the eagle has a contempt for the subdivisions of labour; the game laws, too, he sets at defiance; far and wide, without leave asked or given, he acts as his own huntsman, butcher, or cook; even when con- fined, he takes great delight in skimming for himself; and as he uniformly swallows a portion of the fur, this fact of itself is decisive as to the proper mode of treatment, and proves that down of some kind