86 Retrospective Criticism* 



could the bird find or smell ; he was intent on discovering 

 some where none existed ; and, after reiterated efforts, all use- 

 less, he took flight, coursed about the field, when, suddenly 

 rounding and falling, I saw him kill a small garner snake, and 

 swallow it in an instant. The vulture rose again, sailed about, 

 and passed several times over my stuffed deerskin, as if loth 

 to abandon so good-looking a prey. 



"Judge of my feelings when I plainly saw that the vulture, 

 which could not discover, through its extraordinary sense of 

 smell, that no flesh, either fresh or putrid, existed about that 

 skin, could, at a glance, see a snake, scarcely as large as a 

 man's finger, alive, and destitute of odour, hundreds of yards 

 distant. I concluded that, at all events, his ocular powers 

 were much better than his sense of smell. 



" Second Experiment, I had a large dead hog hauled some 

 distance from the house, and put into a ravine, about 20 ft. 

 deeper than the surface of the earth around it, narrow and 

 winding, much filled with briars and high cane. In this I 

 made the negroes conceal the hog, by binding cane over it, 

 until I thought it would puzzle either buzzards, carrion crows, 

 or any other birds to see it, and left it for some days. This 

 was early in the month of July, when in this latitude a dead 

 body becomes putrid and extremely fetid in a short time. I 

 saw, from time to time, many vultures in search of food sail 

 over the field and ravine in all directions, but none discovered 

 the carcass, although during this time several dogs had visited 

 it, and fed plentifully on it. I tried to go near it, but the 

 smell was so insufferable, when within thirty yards, that I 

 abandoned it ; and the remnants were entirely destroyed at 

 last through natural decay. I then took a young pig, put a 

 knife through its neck, .and made it bleed on the earth and 

 grass about the same place, and, having covered it closely with 

 leaves, also watched the result. The vultures saw the fresh 

 blood, alighted about it, followed it down into the ravine, 

 discovered the pig by its blood, and devoured it when yet 

 quite fresh, within my sight. Not contented with these ex- 

 periments, which I already thought fully conclusive, having 

 found two young vultures, about the size of pullets, covered 

 yet with down, and looking more like quadrupeds than birds, 

 I had them brought home, and put into a large coop in the 

 vard, in the view of every body, and attended to their feeding 

 myself. I gave them a great number of red-headed wood- 

 peckers and parrokeets, birds then easy to procure, as they 

 were feeding daily on the mulberry trees in the immediate 

 neighbourhood of my orphans. These the young vultures 

 could tear to pieces by putting both feet on the body, and 



