go Wild Birds and their Haunts 



boat which left the ship was lost. A few days afterwards, 

 however, when the gates of Gibraltar were opened in the 

 morning, the ass presented itself for admittance and pro- 

 ceeded to the stable of Mr. Weeks, a merchant, which he 

 had formerly occupied, to the no small surprise of this 

 gentleman, who imagined that, from some accident, the 

 animal had never been shipped on board the " Ister." 



On the return of the vessel to repair, the mystery was 

 explained, and it turned out that " Valiante " (sc the ass 

 was called) had not only swam safely to shore, but, with- 

 out guide, compass, or travelling map, had found his way 

 from Point de Gat to Gibraltar, a distance of more than 

 two hundred miles, through a mountainous and intricate 

 country, intersected by streams, which he had never 

 traversed before, and in so short a period that he could not 

 have made one false turn. His not having been stopped 

 on the road was attributed to the circumstance of his 

 having been formerly used to whip criminals upon, which 

 was indicated to the peasants (who have a superstitious 

 horror of such asses) by the holes in his ears, to which the 

 persons flogged were tied. 



It would appear, from an observation of Professor 

 Lichenstein, that birds which feed on carrion may pro- 

 bably resort to making circular flights, similar to the 

 pigeon, in order to discover a carcase. He remarked, 

 when travelling in South Africa, that if an animal chanced 

 to died in the very midst of the most desert wilderness 

 in less than half an hour there was seen high in the zenith 

 a number of minute objects descending in spiral circles, 

 and increasing in visible magnitude at every revolution. 

 These were soon discovered to be a flight of vultures, 

 which must have observed from a height, viewless to the 

 human eye, the dropping of the animal immediately 

 marked out for prey. 



An old writer, Dr. James Johnson, mentions a fact 

 illustrative of the same view. During the north-east 

 monsoon, when the wind blew steadily in one point for 

 months in succession, he observed a concourse of birds 

 of prey from every point of the horizon hastening to a 

 corpse that was floating down the River Ganges, and he 



