Vernon. All furnish’d, all in arms; …
Like eagles having lately bath’d.”
The larger birds of prey are no less fond of washing, though they care so little for water to drink, that it has been erroneously asserted that they never drink. “What I observed,” says the Abbé Spallanzani,[34] “is, that eagles, when left even for several months without water, did not seem to suffer the smallest inconvenience from the want of it, but when they were supplied with water, they not only got into the vessel and sprinkled their feathers like other birds, but repeatedly dipped the beak, then raised the head, in the manner of common fowls, and swallowed what they had taken up. Hence it is evident that they drink.”
EAGLES TRAINED FOR HAWKING.
In Persia, Tartary, India, and other parts of the East, the eagle was formerly, and is still to a certain extent, used for hunting down the larger birds and beasts. In the thirteenth century, the Khan of Tartary kept upwards of two hundred hawks and eagles, some of which had been trained to catch wolves; and such was the boldness and
power of these birds, that none, however large, could escape from their talons.[35]
Burton, in his “Anatomy of Melancholy,”[36] quoting from Sir Antony Shirley’s “Travels,” says: “The Muscovian Emperours reclaim eagles, to let fly at hindes, foxes, &c., and such a one was sent for a present to Queen Elizabeth.”
A traveller to the Putrid Sea, in 1819, wrote: “Wolves are very common on these steppes; and they are so bold that they sometimes attack travellers. We passed by a large one, lying on the ground with an eagle, which had probably attacked him, by his side. Its talons were nearly buried in his back; in the struggle both had died.”[37]
TIRING.
Owing to the great difficulty in training them, as well as to the difficulty in obtaining them, eagles have rarely been trained to the chase in England. Some years since, Captain Green, of Buckden, in Huntingdonshire, had a fine golden eagle, which he had taught to take hares and rabbits;[38] and this species has been found to be more tractable than any other.