On the John-Crow Vulture. 01 



cottage in this town, rose from his bed after a two days 

 confinement by fever, to purchase in the market some fresh 

 meat for a little soup. Before he could do more than prepare 

 the several ingi^edients of herbs and roots, and put his meat 

 in water for the preparation of his pottage, the paroxysm of 

 fever had returned, and he laid himself on his bed exhausted. 

 Two days elapsed in this state of helplessness and inanition, 

 by which time the mass of meat and pot-herbs had putrefied. 

 The stench becoming very perceptible in the neighbourhood, 

 vulture after vulture, as they sailed past, were observed 

 always to descend to the cottage of the German, and to 

 sweep round, as if they had tracked some putrid carcase, but 

 failed to find exactly where it was. This led the neighbours 

 to apprehend that the poor man lay dead in his cottage, as 

 no one had seen him for the two days last past. His door was 

 broken open : he was found in a state of helpless feebleness, 

 but the room was most insufferably offensive from something 

 putrefying, which could not immediately be found, for the 

 fever having deprived the German of his wits, he had no re- 

 collection of his uncooked mess of meat and herbs. No one 

 imagining that the kitchen pot could contain anything of- 

 fensive, search was made everywhere but in the right place ; 

 at last the pot-lid was lifted, and the cause of the unsup- 

 portable stench discovered in the corrupted soup-meat. 



" Here we have the sense of smelling directing the vul- 

 tures, without any assistance from the sense of sight, and 

 discovering unerringly the locality of the putrid animal mat- 

 ter, when even the neighbours were at fault in their patient 

 search. 



** Some few days succeeding this occurrence, after a night 

 and morning of heavy rain, in which our streets had been 

 inundated to the depth of a foot, and flood after flood had 

 been sweeping to the river the drainage of the whole town, 

 a piece of recent offal had been brought down from some of 

 the yards where an animal had been slaughtered, and lodged 

 in the street. A vulture beating about in search of food, 

 dashed in a slanting direction from a considerable heiglit, 

 and just resting, without closing his wings, snatched up the 

 fresh piece of flesh, and carried it off. 



