The Osprey is one of the most cosmopolitan Birds-of-Prey. From Alaska to Brazil, from Lapland to Natal, from Japan to Tasmania, and in some of the islands of the Pacific, it occurs as a winter-visitant or as a resident. The countries which it does not frequent would be more easily named than those in which it is found—and among the former are Iceland and New Zealand. Though migratory in Europe at least, it is generally independent of climate. It breeds equally on the half-thawed shores of Hudson’s Bay and on the cays of Honduras, in the dense forests of Finland and on the barren rocks of the Red Sea, in Kamchatka and in West Australia. Where, through abundance of food, it is numerous—as in former days was the case in the eastern part of the United States—the nests of the Fish-Hawk (to use its American name) may be placed on trees to the number of three hundred close together. Where food is scarcer and the species accordingly less plentiful, a single pair will occupy an isolated rock, and jealously expel all intruders of their kind, as happens in Scotland. The lover of birds cannot see many more enjoyable spectacles than an Osprey engaged in fishing—poising itself aloft, with upright body, and wings beating horizontally, ere it plunges like a plummet beneath the water, and immediately after reappears shaking a shower of drops from its plumage. The feat of carrying off an Osprey’s eggs is often difficult, and attended with some risk, but has more than once tempted the most daring of birds’ nesters. Apart from the dangerous situation not unfrequently chosen by the birds for their eyry,— a steep rock in a lonely lake, only to be reached after a long swim through chilly water, or the summit of a very tall tree,—their fierceness in defence of their eggs and young is not to be despised. Men and boys have had their head gashed by the sharp claw of the angry parent, and this happening when the robber is already in a precarious predicament, and unable to use any defensive weapon, renders the enterprise formidable. But the prize is worthy of the danger. Few birds lay eggs so beautiful or so rich in colouring: their white or pale ground is spotted, blotched, or marbled with almost every shade of purple, orange, and red—passing from the most delicate lilac, buff, and peach blossom, through violet, chestnut, and crimson, to a nearly absolute black. A few years ago some of the best-informed ornithologists were led to think that persecution had exterminated the Osprey from Great Britain, except as a chance visitant. This opinion proved to be incorrect, and at the present time the bird is believed still to breed in at least two counties of Scotland, but the secret of its resorts is carefully guarded by those who wish to retain it as a member of the country’s fauna, for publication would doubtless speedily put an end to its occupancy. (a. n.)