Journey through Coloiubia and Ecuador. 225 



above. The aninials had apparently been dead for some days, 

 but, with the exception of the eyes, no part of them had been 

 eaten. The grass around was completely worn away by the 

 feet of so many great birds. The shepherds told us that 

 the Condors sometimes sit round the bodies for several 

 days before they begin the feast. They commence to eat 

 them under the tail, and thence pull all the entrails out. 



I think that Dr. Sharpe (Cat. B. i. p. 21) is right in naming 

 a second species of Condor froniEcuador >S^. cequatorialis ; but 

 the brown variety is larger than the white-winged kind, and 

 not smaller, as Orton supposed. The smaller brown indi- 

 viduals would be the young of both kinds. The first brown 

 examples that we saw were on the " pdramo " of San Gabriel, 

 near the Colombian frontier, and were of ordinary size; I 

 took them to be the young of the ordinary Condor. But 

 on Pichincha, and at other places south of Quito, we occa- 

 sionally saw other brown specimens,which at once struck us 

 by their extraordinary size. I mentioned this to Mr. Soder- 

 strcim, and he said that he always took the brown bird to be 

 the larger. He said that they chiefly inhabited the region 

 around Chimborazo. I found that the natives distinguished 

 them by the name of " Buitre Cafe,^' and shepherds at dif- 

 ferent places on the Eastern Andes all agreed that when adult 

 they were larger than and not so common as the others. 



Whymper, in his splendid work on the Great Andes of 

 the Equator, states that he never saw Condors flying higher 

 than an altitude of 18,000 feet. He certainly had more 

 opportunities of forming a correct opinion than anyone else 

 I know of, and, so far as my experience went, I quite agree 

 with him. 



The Indians who live in the high mountains often catch 

 Condors by digging a hole in the ground sufficiently large 

 for a man to hide in, over which they place a cow's hide, 

 leaving only a small part uncovered down one side. Near 

 this they place the carcase or part of an animal, and the man 

 in hiding secures the Condors by the legs as they settle. 

 Still another way is to place a carcase in a fairly deep trench, 

 from which the Coudois are unalile to take wing again. 



SliR. VIII. — VOL. If. Q 



