NEOPHRON PERCNOPTERUS, 3 



that has not yet seen the day, states that " the percnopterus makes 

 its nest at the end of March, in the crevices and in the caves of rocks, 

 usually in inaccessible places in a perpendicular cliff. It lays in the 

 mouth of April, one or two eggs of a variable form. It hatches at the 

 end of May ; and the young (always one or two in number) are not of 

 age to take their flight until July." The " one or two eggs " agrees 

 with the account of M. Moquin-Tandon, and of that given by Bruce 

 (Travels to the Sources of the Nile, App. p. 164-) ; but the time 

 spent in the nest does not come up to the " four months " of Bruce, 

 though, from the small size of the e^^, we might expect it to be 

 long. The Condor, the Black Vulture, and probably most Vultures, 

 appear to lay two eggs only ; and it is also said of them that they make 

 no nest (Darwin, ' Zoology of the " Beagle " Voyage,' part iii. p. 4 ; 

 Audubon, ' Ornithological Biography,' vol. ii. p. 54). Does our bird 

 form its own nest ? In Barbary, the Egjqotian Vulture probably breeds 

 only in the mountains of the interior, as it was not known to Mr. 

 John Drummond-Hay, then Her Britannic Majesty's Consul at Tan- 

 gier. Mr. Hewitson writes, " I have not the slightest doubt of the 

 authenticity of this egg." From Mr. Wilmot I have heard also of 

 two other eggs of this bird, — one laid in some Zoological Garden, and 

 figured in Lefevre's ' Atlas des (Eufs des Oiseaux d'Europe,' the 

 other brought from Egypt by a Scotch physician. I should add that 

 M. Fa\der's account of the nidification is partly worded after that of 

 Temminck (Man. d'Orn. i. p. 10)"^. 



[M. Moquin-Tandon has some verj' instructive notes on the nidification of 

 this species in the ' Revue et Magasin de Zoologie ' for November 1857, p. 491.] 



§2. One. — Tangier, April 1845. From M.Eavier's Collection, 



1847. 



O. W., tab. 1. fig. 3. 



This egg I bought, among some others, of Mr. Williams of Oxford 

 Street. I saw M. FaAier's marks on nearly all of them, and I did 

 not doubt they were all from him originally. From the writing upon 

 it, it is evidently one of those I saw at Tangier. 



* A curious geological event happened in consequence of M. Fa\'ier's oological 

 inclinations. A huge mass of sand-rock was pointed out to me, underneath which 

 were said to lie the remains of four men who had been engaged in robbing a nest 

 for him, when the mass gave way and rolled upon them. It had been under- 

 mined for several years by the crumbling away of tlie clay on which it rested con- 

 foi-mably ; and as it is the last feather that breaks the camel's back, so the weight 

 of these four men determined the moment of the fall of the huge clitf. All tlie 

 powers of Tangier could not get them from beneath it. 



