ILLUSTRATIONS (2). THE CONDOR. 237 



(2) p. 210 — '■''The Condor, that giant among vultures." 



I have elsewhere* given the natural history of the Condor, 

 which before my travels had been variously misstated. The 

 name is properly Cuntur in the Inca language ; Manque, 

 among the Araucanes in Chili; Sarcoramphus Condor accord- 

 ing to Dumeril. I sketched the head of this bird from life, 

 of the natural size, and had my drawing engraved. Next to 

 the Condor, the L'ammergeier of Switzerland, and the Falco 

 destructor (Daud.), probably Linnaeus' Falco Harpyia, are the 

 largest of vWJtying birds. 



The region which may be regarded as the common resort 

 of the Condor, begins at the elevation of Mount Etna. It 

 embraces atmospheric strata which are from 10,000 to 19,000 

 feet above the level of the sea. Humming birds also, which in 

 their summer nights advance as far as 61° north lat. on the 

 western coast of America, and are on the other hand found 

 in the Archipelago of the Tierra del Fuego, were seen by Von 

 Tschudi in Puna at an elevation of 14,600 feet.f There is a 

 pleasure in comparing the largest and the smallest of the 

 feathered inhabitants of the air. The largest among the 

 Condors found in the Cordilleras, near Quito, measure nearly 

 15 feet across the expanded wings, and the smaller ones 8| 

 feet. This size, and the visual angle at which the birds are 

 seen vertically above one's head, afford an idea of the enormous 

 height to which the Condor soars in a clear sky. A visual 

 angle of four minutes, for instance, would give a vertical 

 elevation of 7330 feet. The cavern (Mackay) of Antisana, 

 opposite the mountain of Chussulongo, and where we 

 measured the birds soaring over the chain of the Andes, lies 

 at an elevation of nearly 16,000 feet above the surface of the 

 Pacific ; the absolute height which the Condor reached must 

 therefore be 23,273 feet, a height at which the barometer 

 scarcely stands at 12' 7 inches; but which, however, does not 

 exceed that of the loftiest summit of the Himalaya. It is 

 a remarkable physiological phenomenon that the same bird, 

 which wheels for hours together through these highly rarefied 

 regions, should be able suddenly, as for instance on the 

 western declivity of the volcano of Pichincha, to descend to 



* See my Recueil d 'Observations de Zoologie et d'Anatomie com- 

 parSe, vol. i. p. 26 — 45. 



f Fauna Peruana, Ornithol. p. 12. 



