Page:The Natural History of Ireland vol1.djvu/49

 equally suited. Montagu, apparently without positive informa- tion, speaks of the sea eagle as breeding there annually.

Eagles visiting Lough Berg to prey on dead fish. — I have been informed by Mr. Wm. Todhunter, formerly resident at Portumna, on the banks of Lough Derg (Galway), that about the 20th of June, 1835, three eagles visited the shores of that lake, attracted apparently by immense quantities of perch, which, with some trout and pike, ascended in a sick state to the surface of the water, and died there. These eagles admitted of a near approach, and were not disturbed by a steam-boat passing twice in the day within a hundred yards of them : they remained for about three weeks. Early in the month of July, in 1836 and 1837, when the fish likewise died in numbers, two eagles visited the place, and con- tinued a similar time. In 1838, but few fish died, and the eagles, winch made their appearance about the end of July, stayed but for a short period. My informant attributed the fatality of the fish to the " hot weather," stating that where they died, the water was but from one to three feet in depth, and consequently would be much acted on by heat. The lake generally is shallow, its average depth being about eight feet, and there is no apparent current through it.*

Eagles obtained by simple means. — Montagu relates an instance of a sea eagle being so much wounded by a charge of snipe-shot, as, after flying some distance, to fall and be captured. I have seen one in captivity, which was similarly obtained at the Horn, by Mr. John Sims of Dunfanaghy, near to whom it rose as he was returning from snipe-shooting. But, by still simpler means, an eagle was captured in the county of Tyrone, at the end of Decem-

This fatality was probably owing to an extraordinary diminution of the propor- tion of oxygen in the water of the lake. MM. Aug. and Ch. Morren, in their most interesting "Recherches sur la Rubéfaction des Eaux et leur Oxygenation par les Ani- malcules et les Algues," state, to quote the words used in noticing their memoir in the Annals of Natural History, vol. xii. p. 207, that "At times they have found the pro- portion (of oxygen) so low as 18, 19, or 20 per cent., and the consequence has been the destruction of the greater part of the fish by asphyxia. On the 18th of June, 1835, (the very time when the fatality was greatest in Lough Derg,) the greater part of the fish in the Maine perished from this cause ; and the same circumstance was ob- served twice in the pond, which first directed the attention of the authors to the subject of the memoir."