Oh, What A Delight It Would Be To Get Up There, Above The Nest, And Look Down Into The Great Basin-Like Hollow Lined With Sheep's Wool And See The Eggs, Bigger Than Turkey's Eggs, All Marbled With Deep Red, Or Creamy White Splashed With Blood-Red!

For I had seen _carancho_ eggs brought in by a gaucho, and I was ambitious to take a clutch from a nest with my own hands.

It was true I had been told by my mother that if I wanted wild birds' eggs I was never to take more than one from a nest, unless it was of some injurious species. And injurious the _carancho_ certainly was, in spite of his good behaviour when at home. On one of my early rides on my pony I had seen a pair of them, and I think they were our own birds, furiously attacking a weak and sickly ewe; she had refused to lie down to be killed, and they were on her neck, beating and tearing at her face and trying to pull her down. Also I had seen a litter of little pigs a sow had brought forth on the plain attacked by six or seven _caranchos_, and found on approaching the spot that they had killed half of them (about six, I think), and were devouring them at some distance from the old pig and the survivors of the litter. But how could I climb the tree and get over the rim of the huge nest?

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