Page:The Natural History of Ireland vol1.djvu/46

 are occasionally found in connection with the next step to the sublime, — the ridiculous ; an example of which we have in one being shot by a man from his bed, as it was feeding on a dead pig.

We were assured by Serjeant Croker, of the Constabulary, that about six months before we visited Ballycroy, an eagle, when distant a few yards only from him and several persons, carried off a hen from that village. He was informed that a similar occurrence had several times taken place. True, we were long before told this, and much more, respecting the eagles of the district, in the Wild Sports of the West (letter 19); but I was not aware whether the author intended his admirably graphic narrative, — almost " too good to be true," — to be understood as literally correct. It is there remarked, that " the eagle in the gray of morning sweeps through the cabins, and never fails in carrying off some prey;" * that " to black fowls, eagles appear particularly attached ; and the villagers (of Dugurth) avoid as much as possible rearing birds of that colour " (p. 107). This partiality, if such there really be, is probably owing to the black fowls being the most readily seen by the eagle, both from a distance and when with all his fears upon him, — for well he knows the evil of such ways, — he makes a sud- den stoop to the poultry about the cabin-door.

Mr. M'Calla, writing from Roundstone, Connemara (Galway), in 1841, supplied me with the following information in substance respecting this species.

It is common throughout that district ; has its eyrie in cliffs rising from the sea ; in trees growing on the small islands of inland lakes, and in once instance built on a green islet without any trees.t A pair has bred for a number of years on the marine island of Boffin, and from the nest being inaccessible, a brood of eaglets has been annually reared ; these have always left the island

Dr. Laurence Edmonston in a communication to Macgillivray's Hist, of Brit. Birds (vol. 3, p. 231), on the sea eagle in Shetland, makes a precisely similar state- ment.

t Mr. Macgillivray, in the third volume of his History of British Birds, gives a very full and interesting account of this species from personal observation, and men- tions, that "on a fiat islet in a small lake in Harris, one of the Hebrides, a pair of these birds bred for many years, although there are lofty crags in the neighbourhood."