"AN EAGLE IN THE Am."
I cannot forbear to tell another, and a prettier story of the way of a bird in the air ; one of Solomon's four marvels. It was enacted before the eyes of one of the best sportsmen it is my fortune to know. He was fishing in Scotland in a stream running below a high cliff, from which flew out the most splendid bird he had ever seen, a golden eagle, hovering "in the light of its golden wings." Soon another golden eagle flew out and half hovered some distance over the first. Both were quite close and as he watched a smaller bird fell from the upper of the two eagles. He thought it must have been held in the talons, and for a moment that it was a victim. But soon the true interpretation became plain. The dropped burden was a young eagle, and as it half fell, half flew, it was caught on the back of the lower bird. Then the two parents changed places, the one with the baby on its back flew upwards and the other downwards ; and the manoeuvre was repeated. The ghillie explained : "We have seen golden eagles teaching their young to fly." The incident was quoted as the finest spectacle of a life time of observation of wild animals.
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