92 On the John-Crow Vulture. 



" Here was the sense of sight, unassisted by that of smell- 

 ing, for the meat was too recent to communicate any taint 

 to the morning air, and the vulture stooped to it from a very 

 far distance. 



"On another occasion, very near to the time when these 

 facts attracted my notice, a dead rat had been thrown out, 

 early in the morning into the street, having been caught in 

 the previous night. Two vultures sailing over head in quest 

 of a morning meal, descended at the same time, stooping to 

 the dead rat, the one from the south the other from the 

 north, and both seized the object of attraction at the same 

 moment. 



" Here, again, was the vision, unaided by the sensitiveness 

 of the nostrils, directing tivo birds, with the same appetite, at 

 the same moment, to the same object. 



" For the next example, I am indebted to the records of a 

 police-court. A clerk in the engineer department at Up- 

 park Camp, brought before the magistrates of St Andrews, 

 on the 20th January 1840, a man who had been beset in the 

 night by the dogs of the barracks. The poultry-yard had been 

 repeatedly robbed ; and this person was supposed to have 

 been prowling after the roost-fowls at the time the dogs rose 

 upon him." This case had been heard, and the man com- 

 mitted to the House of Correction, when a complaint was 

 presented against another man, whom Major G., also of the 

 camp, had detected under similar circumstances, and lodged 

 in the guard-house. Two days after his detection, "the 

 Major observed some carrion-vultures hovering about a spot 

 in the fields, and on sending to see what was the matter, a 

 Kilmarnock cap, containing a dead fowl and some eggs, tied 

 up in a pair of old trousers, was found very near to the spot 

 where the prisoner was caught. This discovery by the aid 

 of the vultures confirming the suspicion against the prisoner, 

 he was condemned. 



" The last instance that I shall relate is one in which the 

 senses of hearing, seeing, and smelling, were all exercised, 

 but not under the influence of the usual appetite for carrion 

 food, but where the object was a living, though wounded 

 animal. 



