2"d S. VIII. JciA- 2. '59.] 



KOMS AND QUERIES. 



Ill an epigram of Catullus against a certain 

 Cominius, the vulture is mentioned in a manner 

 which might be understood to imply that the bird 

 was then common in Italy ; — 



"Non equidem dubito, quin primuni inimica bonorum 

 Lingua exsectaavido sit data vulturio. 

 Eftbssos oculos Yoret atro gutture corvus, 

 Intestina canes, cetera membra hipi." — Curm. 108. 



The Romans were, however, so familiar with 

 the Greek poets, that this image may have been 

 derived from their works, and not from nature. 



The great Bearded Vulture, or Lammergeier,' 

 inhabits the Alps and Pyrenees, the mountains of 

 Greece, and of the Tyrol ; but even in these ele- 

 vated regions is now a rare bird. According to 

 Tschudi, in his work entitled Das Thierlcben 

 der Alpenwelt, this vulture frequents in summer 

 the highest levels of the Alps ; in winter he de- 

 scends to the lower ranges, but never, like the 

 eagle, visits the plains. He builds on precipitous 

 rocks, and never perches on trees, except for the 

 purpose of collecting wood for his nest. As to 

 the presence of the Lammergeier in the mountains 

 of Greece and Roumelia, see Lenz, Zoologie der 

 Alien, p. 275. The Vultur cinereus occurs more 

 frequently in Europe; it is found in Spain and 

 Sicily ; it is common in Sardinia ; in Italy it is 

 rare, and never found in the forests. (Penny 

 Cyclo. vol. xxvi. p. 470.) Cetti, Gli Uccelli di 

 Sardegna (1776), p. 1 — 27., enumerates four 

 species of vultures in Sardinia. He says that 

 they are often killed by the shepherds when gorged 

 with food, and unable to rise quickly from the 

 earth ; and that they build their nests on the 

 most inaccessible rocks. Brydone states that the 

 vulture inhabits Etna (Tour in Sicily, vol. i. p. 

 236.), and Ford mentions that it is common in 

 Spain. (^Handbook of Spain, vol. i. p. 349.) 



The original version of the augury of Romulus 

 and Remus seems merely to have mentioned 

 twelve birds : their conversion into vultures was 

 doubtless a later embellishment, in order to give 

 effect to the story. The prodigy which prefigured 

 the expulsion of the Tarquins — the eagles which 

 built their nest on a palm tree in the royal gar- 

 dens, and the attack of the vultures on the nest, 

 followed by the slaughter of the young and the 

 expulsion of the old birds — is a manifest fiction. 

 Both these narratives belong to the pre-historical 

 age of Rome : but the stories -of the flights of 

 vultures which appeared to Augustus ; of those 

 which settled on the two temples at Rome ; and 

 of the vultures which attacked Vitellius while he 

 was sacrificing, likewise betray evident marks of 

 fiction. It is difficult to explain the statement of 

 Plutarch that the Romans made much use of this 

 bird in auguries, except by supposing that he re- 

 fers to the practice of the Romans in countries 

 where it was more often seen than in Italy. The 

 circumstances in the natural history of the vul- 



ture reported by the aruspex Umbricius, are 

 imaginary, and imply no personal knowledge of 

 the habits of the bird. The story of the two vul- 

 tures with brazen necklaces, which appeared to 

 the army of Marius before a victory, is not fixed 

 to any locality, and is moreover a manifest fable 

 in the form in which it is related to us. Livy's 

 account of the non-appearance of the vulture at 

 Rome during the murrain and pestilence of 

 174 — 5 B.C., implies that its appearance was natu- 

 rally to be expected on such an occasion. Never- 

 theless, if there had been any vultures in the 

 country near Rome, they would doubtless have 

 devoured the dead bodies, without caring for the 

 cause of their death. 



It may be considered as tolerably certain 

 that the vulture was as rare a visitant of the 

 plains of Italy in ancient as it is in modern times. 

 The ancients were not always precise in distin- 

 guishing species in natural history; thus they 

 confounded the cat and the weasel, two species 

 which seem to us very different ; and it is proba- 

 ble that they may have sometimes confounded the 

 eagle or other large carnivorous bird with the 

 vulture. Some vestiges of this confusion are visi- 

 ble in Pliny, N. H. x. 3., and it appears to occur 

 in some passages of the Old and New Testament. 

 (See Winer, B. R, W., art. Abler.) Aristotle, H. 

 N. ix. 32., describes the percnopterus as a spe- 

 cies of eagle, which in its habits resembles the 

 vulture ; and JElian, N. A. ii. 46., states that the 

 EBgypius is between the vulture and the eagle 

 (compare Camus, ib. p. 65. 622.). Modern natu- 

 ralists have likewise established a species of gypaii- 

 tus, intermediate between vultures and eagles. G. 

 Cuvier, in his notes to the French translation of 

 Pliny (tom. vii. p. 366.), remarks that the de- 

 scriptions of bii'ds given by the ancients are less 

 intelligible and exact than their descriptions of 

 quadrupeds and of fish ; and he thinks that this 

 difference is owing to the fact that their Informa- 

 tion respecting birds was principally derived from 

 the augurs, who were not agreed as to the names 

 of the different species which they observed for 

 the purposes of their superstitious craft. 



The vulture, like other rapacious birds, is in 

 general solitary in its habits ; and the stories 

 of large flights of vultures on the site of Rome, 

 before its foundation, and afterwards among its 

 buildings, are quite incredible. It seems, how- 

 ever, that the vulture has certain habits which 

 give it the appearance of being a gregarious bird. 

 The condors sometimes haunt the same cliff in 

 South America to the number of twenty or 

 thirty ; and five or six sometimes roost on the 

 same tree. The Sociable vulture, a South African 

 bird, is so called from its habit of packing toge- 

 ther (Penny Cycl. ib. p. 466. 474.). Gesner, Hist. 

 Nat. vol. iii. p. 712., lays it down, on the autho- 

 rity of Belon, that the vulture is the only 



