Retrospective Criticism, 277 



of their feet, because, forsooth, the incarcerated owl in ques- 

 tion never once struck her talons into the food which had 

 been placed within an inch of them. 



Nothing can show more forcibly the utter fallacy of the 

 American experiments, than the attack of the vultures on the 

 coarse painting which represented a " sheep skinned and cut 

 up/' Till I had read the account of it, I had always imagined 

 that the vulture had a remarkably keen and penetrating eye. 

 I must now alter my opinion. If the American gentlemen 

 do not mind what they are about, they will ultimately prove 

 too much (" quod nimium probat, nihil probat " [who proves 

 too much, proves nothing]), and at last compel us English- 

 men to conclude that the vultures of the United States can 

 neither see nor smell. They assure us that these birds are 

 not guided to their food by their scent, but by their sight 

 alone ; and then, to give us a clear idea how defective that 

 sight is, they show us that their vultures cannot distinguish 

 the coarsely painted carcass of a sheep on canvass from that 

 of a real sheep. They " commenced tugging at the paint- 

 ing," and " seemed much disappointed and surprised " that 

 they had mistaken canvass for mutton. Sad blunder ! Piti- 

 able, indeed, is the lot of the American vulture ! His nose 

 is declared useless in procuring food, at the same time that 

 his eyesight is proved to be lamentably defective. Unless 

 something be done for him, \ is ten to one but that he '11 

 come to the parish at last, pellis et ossa, a bag of bones. 



The American philosophers having fully established the 

 fact, that their vultures are prone to mistake a piece of 

 coarsely painted canvass for the carcass of a real sheep 

 " skinned and cut up," I am now quite prepared to receive 

 accounts from Charleston of vultures attacking every shoul- 

 der-of-mutton sign in the streets, or attempting to gobble 

 down the painted sausages over the shop doors, or tugging 

 with might and main at the dim and faded eyes in some 

 decaying portrait of the immortal Doctor Franklin. 



The absurdity of all this must be evident to everybody. 

 1, in my turn, hope to prove satisfactorily, by inference, 

 that which the American philosophers have failed to demon- 

 strate by EXPERIMENTS. I State that effluvium from putrid 

 matter, being lighter than common air, necessarily ascends in 

 the atmosphere, unless artificially impeded (as probably was 

 the case in the first experiment of the American philosophers), 

 or prevented from mounting by superincumbent humidity. 

 Now, the organ of scent, which is strongly developed in the 

 vulture, coming in contact with this effluvium, when it is 

 allowed to float in the atmosphere, enables the bird to trace 



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