440 ANNUAL, REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1920 



Akin to this homing sense and operating in a way equally intangible 

 to man there exists, in all probability, a food-finding sense. Widely 

 distributed and occasionally highly specialized within several lower 

 groups, notably the insecta, the food-finding sense has persisted in 

 only a limited way among vertebrates. There is little evidence that it 

 exists among mammals. It is somewhat broadly a part of bird life, 

 and among birds it seems to be most highly developed in the carrion 

 feeders. 



In many species of birds doubtless only an adjunct to activity in 

 ranging or acuteness of vision, the food-finding sense — at least on the 

 basis of strong presumptive evidence — is so highly developed in 

 certain individuals among these carrion feeders that it can act inde- 

 pendently of the known senses. 



Many of the writer's observations on food finding in turkey vul- 

 tures {Cathartes aura septentrionalis) have been insufficiently ex- 

 plained by the common theory that these birds are directed to their 

 food by the senses of sight or smell. But the most striking observa- 

 tion — and the one which most strongly leads him toward a belief in a 

 definite food-finding sense — is an incident the facts of which are as 

 follows : 



At daybreak, January 1, two hunters, one of them the writer, were 

 out with their pack of foxhounds in the farming valley of the Little 

 Conestoga south of Lititz, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. The 

 bottom was bare of snow, though it was gray white with a heavy 

 frost. The morning was quiet, practically windless, and the tem- 

 perature was about 28° — just cold enough to keep the ground firm. 

 The scene had in it all the charm that attends starting a fox at winter 

 sunrise. The voices of the hounds on the twisted night track were 

 rapidly going up toward the happy burst that would tell of jumping 

 the fox — when something went wrong. The music changed its tone 

 and the younger hounds began to straggle in toward the horses ; and 

 then with the rest of the pack, and striking right and left among the 

 hounds, came the cause of the breakup — a mad dog. 



To borrow a gun, kill the dog, and throw his carcass into a limestone 

 sink hole was the work of about half an hour. It was then 9 o'clock. 

 Three hours later, at the request of a local veterinarian who wished 

 to examine the dog, I returned to get the carcass. As I nearecl the 

 hole two vultures climbed out and flapped away. They had been at 

 the dog evidently some time, for the flesh about the hams was much 

 eaten away. 



There were two unusual features in the situation which, as the 

 mind dwelt upon them, made the presence of those vultures in the 

 sink hole most impressive, if not uncanny. 



The first of these was that there was no winter camp of the vul- 

 tures nearer than the southern slope of the South Mountain — 8 miles 



