Note 2895 — BOOK X. THE NATURAL HISTORY OF BIRDS.

Cuvier remarks, that this passage is borrowed, with some changes, from Aristotle’s “History of Animals,” B. ix. c. 32, but that the account given by Pliny is not very easily explained, from the fact that the word eagle is not used by him in a rigorous acceptation of the word. Indeed it is only at the present day that any accurate knowledge has been obtained as to the different species of eagles, and the changes of colour to which they are subject with the advance of age; circumstances which have caused the species of them to be multiplied by naturalists. It is very doubtful, he says, whether Aristotle has distinguished the various kinds any better than Pliny; although Buffon, who himself was not very successful in distinguishing them, says that Aristotle understood more on the subject than the moderns.