Ornithological and Other Oddities 



as sea-fowl on a guano bed, while between the 

 vat and the water a hungry crowd awaited the 

 fragments of very well boiled beef as these were 

 tossed out from time to time. So thick were 

 they that when I startled them they could not all 

 get on the wing at once, and two or three incon- 

 tinently fell into the water, and had to scramble 

 out as best they could on the farther side. And 

 it needed quite a near approach to startle them, 

 for long immunity had rendered them nearly as 

 tame as poultry. They were all one species, the 

 Bengal vulture {Pseudogyps bengalensis), which, 

 in spite of the localisation implied in its name, 

 is the commonest kind all over India. It is a 

 very shabby-looking bird, almost as big as a hen 

 turkey, with dirty-black plumage, slightly relieved 

 by a ruff of white down. There is a white patch 

 on the back, and a white band along the under- 

 side of each wing, but these marks are not seen 

 when the wings are closed. The head and neck 

 are nearly naked, and, as the complexion of those 

 parts is singularly muddy, it does not improve the 

 general effect. At least half the birds present on 

 this occasion were young ones, and these were 

 dirty brown all over, not enlivened by any white 

 markings at all, so that they looked a shade more 

 dowdy even than their elders. 



Going on, however, beyond the piles of bones 



which lay back of the boiling-vat, we found out on 



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