Page:The Natural History of Ireland vol1.djvu/32

 panied by Robert Ball, Esq. of Dublin,) Lieutenant Reynolds of the Preventive Service, a keen sportsman, and well acquainted with birds, assured, us that one or two pair of golden eagles breed annually in the island. When subsequently on the mountain of Croaghpatrick, which volcano-like terminates in a magnificent cone, and is in elevation the second in Connaught, we for a con- siderable time observed a pair of these eagles soaring above its summit. In the county of Kerry a few weeks afterwards, an eagle, supposed to be of this species, was seen from the top of Manger- ton, which towers above the lakes of Killarney. Mr. Robert Pat- terson, of Belfast, when visiting this place in the previous autumn, made the following note: — "Near to the little lake called, the Devil's Punch- bowl, we disturbed, four eagles preying on a full- grown sheep; they rose majestically into the air as we approached. The people who were with us supposed that the sheep, being per- haps sickly, had been killed by the eagles, — a supposition corro- borated by the quantity of fleece scattered over the ground for some yards in one direction. The flesh of the neck was complete- ly removed, although that of every other part was untouched. We were assured, that two eagles will occasionally pursue a hare, one flying low and coursing it along the ground, the other keep- ing perpendicularly above the terrified animal, and. occasionally changing their places, until the hare is completely wearied out. The same circumstance was mentioned a few days afterwards at Tralee, and again at Monasterevan : my informant in every instance stated the fact, not as a matter of hearsay, but as one which had fallen under his own knowledge."* The golden eagle has now become very scarce in Kerry. t

A golden eagle was shot in Westmeath in Peb., 1838, when accompanied by another ; and a fine specimen was in the autumn of 1843 killed at Clontarf, near Dublin. Mr. Robert Davis, jun., of Clonmel, notices a male bird in the plumage of the second

This practice is mentioned in the "Wild sports of the West;" (Letter 19) in the work entitled "The Moor and the Loch;" and in an article on "Highland Sports," in the Quarterly Review for Dec. 1845, being a review of Scrope's "Days and Nights of Salmon Fishing," p. 103.

f Mr. R. Chute.