448 Zoological Society, 



The writer states that this bird is found in great abundance in the 

 Island of Jamaica, where it is known by the name oiJohn Crow ; and 

 so valuable are its services in the removal of carrion and animal filth, 

 that the legislature have imposed a fine of £5 upon any one destroy- 

 ing it within a stated distance of the principal towns. Its ordi- 

 nary food is carrion, but when hard pressed with hunger it will seize 

 upon young fowls, rats, and snakes. After noticing the highly offen- 

 sive odour emitted from the eggs of this bird when broken, Mr. Sells 

 relates the following instances which have come under his own per- 

 sonal observation, for the purpose of proving, that the Vultur aura 

 possesses the sense of smell in a very acute degree. 



" It has been questioned whether the vulture discovers its food by 

 means of the organ of smell or that of sight. I apprehend that its 

 powers of vision are very considerable, and of most important use to 

 the bird in that point of view ; but that it is principally from highly 

 organized olfactories that it so speedily receives intelligence of where 

 the savory morsel is to be found will plainly appear by the following 

 facts. In hot climates the burial of the dead commonly takes place 

 in about twenty-four hours after death, and that necessarily, so ra- 

 pidly does decomposition take place. On one occasion I had to make 

 a post-mortem examination of a body within twenty hours after 

 death, in a mill-house, completely concealed, and while so engaged 

 the roof of the mill-house was thickly studded with these birds. 

 Another instance was that of an old patient and much-valued friend 

 who died at midnight : the family had to send for necessaries for the 

 funeral to Spanish Town, distant thirty miles, so that the interment 

 could not taJie place until noon of the second day, or thirty- six hours 

 after his decease, long before which time, and a most painful sight 

 it was, the ridge of the shingled roof of his house, a large mansion 

 of but one floor, had a number of these melancholy-looking heralds 

 of death perched thereon, beside many more which had settled in 

 trees in its immediate vicinity. In these cases the birds must have 

 been directed by smell alone as sight was totally out of the question. 



" In opposition to the above opinion, it has been stated by Mr. Au- 

 dubon that vultures and other birds of prey possess the sense of smell 

 in a very inferior degree to carnivorous quadrupeds, and that so far 

 from guiding them to their prey from a distance, it affords them no 

 indication of its presence, even when close at hand. In confirmation 

 of this opinion he relates that he stuffed the skin of a deer full of hay 

 and placed it in a field ; in a few minutes a vulture alighted near it 

 and directly proceeded to attack it, but finding no eatable food he at 

 length quitted it. And he further relates that a dead dog was con- 

 cealed in a narrow ravine twenty feet below the surface of the earth 

 around it and filled with briers and high canes ; that many vultures 

 were seen sailing in all directions over the spot but none discovered 

 it. I may remark upon the above experiments that in the first 

 case the stag was doubtless seen by the birds, but it does not follow 

 that they might not also have smelt the hide, although inodorous to 

 the human nose ; in the second case, the birds had undoubtedly 

 oeen attracted by smell, however embarrassed they might have been 



