The lightest of these shades mixes the olive camel, the second the light rail, the third the dark rail and brown coughlan, and the fourth mixes the golden sooty. This is the best way to dye gold colours. Any man who is not a regular dyer can only be called a fancy dyer, and therefore can give no regular rules. If you are a judge of these colours, you will know by your eye when you get the proper shade. If the first two of them should not be enough of the gold, add more madder by pinches, lest you should overpower it. Divide each shade of the colours into two parts, for fine olives, bordering on muscle’s-beard. Put down a clean vessel with clean water, and put your lightest shade into it, first boiling in it about the size of a horse-bean of copperas. Throw in your stuff, be smart in passing it under your liquor, and in an instant you have a fine golden olive. Put in the size of a pea more of copperas, and put your next shade, and so on till all is done. You are to put in as much as two peas in the last. A little of the dark shade helps the March olive camel, and I have mixed out of these, with a little brown sable, a very good olive camel. All turmeric dyes, when put with binding stuff, stand well. Be careful your turmeric and madder be sound, if not, all is lost. Sound turmeric is very bright, and of a sweet smell. Sound madder is of an oily feel and a sweet smell, and is bright in colour; that which resembles brick-dust is bad, and gives no colour. The madder that is the best may be discovered easily by the taste.—Ancient Recipe.
Golden, a. Made of gold, consisting of gold; shining; yellow, of the colour of gold; valuable.
Golden Eagle. Vide Eagle.
The golden eagle is said to be not unfrequent in the mountainous parts of Ireland and Scotland. It breeds in the most inaccessible rocks, and lays three or four white eggs, Selby says two, of a greyish white colour, clouded with spots of reddish brown.
Smith, in the History of Kerry, says, a poor man in that county got a comfortable subsistence for his family, during a summer of famine, out of an eagle’s nest.
Pennant informs us it is frequent in Scotland, and adds, that it is very destructive to deer, which it will seize between the horns, and, by incessantly beating it with its wings, soon makes a prey of the harassed animal; that it builds in cliffs of rocks near the deer forests, and makes great havoc not only amongst them, but also the white hares and ptarmigans.
Willoughby gives a curious account of the nest of this species found in the woodlands, near the river Derwent, in the Peak of Derbyshire. He says it was made of large sticks, lined with two layers of rushes, between which was one of heath; that in it was one young and an addle egg, and by them a lamb, a hare, and three heath-poults.
Instances have been recorded of infants being carried to their nests; and in the Orkneys there is a law which entitles any person killing one of these birds, to a hen out of every house in the parish in which it is killed. They are remarkable for their longevity, and abstinence from food. Pennant mentions one enduring hunger for twenty-one days.
As we were sporting in the neighbourhood of Ben-Lomond, on the summit of the lesser mountains that form its base, a grouse, (Tetrao Scoticus), was wounded, and flew with difficulty eighty or a hundred paces. An eagle, apparently of this species, perceiving the laborious flight of the grouse, descended with rapid wing from the adjacent lofty cliffs, before our guns were re-loaded, and, in defiance of the shouts made to deter him, carried off his prey.
In another part of the Western Highlands of Scotland, we had an opportunity of witnessing the power of the flight of this bird in pursuit of its quarry. An old black-cock (Tetrao tetrix) was sprung, and was instantly pursued by the eagle, (who must have been on a neighbouring rock unperceived,) across the glen, the breadth of which was at least two miles. The eagle made several unsuccessful pounces, but as there was no cover and the bird large, it probably fell a victim in the end.—Smith—Pennant—Montagu.