320 



ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY BULLETIN 



his appearance of savageness, there were these 

 many good qualities. 



When the care of the young condor was re- 

 linquished to Director Hornaday in New York 

 the bird weighed twenty and one-half pounds, 

 was forty-six inches in length, and had a wing- 

 spread of eight feet. The fact that the bird's 

 history has been followed from the egg stage 

 to the present time has made the present in- 

 stance unique in the records of wild birds in 

 this country. There are only forty-one condor 

 eggs in the museums of the whole world, and 

 as the species is now so nearly extinct it is not 

 likely that this number will ever be largely in- 

 creased. It is popularly supposed that the eggs 

 of the great auk are the rarest of their kind, 

 but between sevent}- and eighty of them have 

 been preserved. None other of the raptorial 

 birds has a range so restricted, and its range 

 at the present time, so far as scientific men 

 know, is from Monterey County, California, 

 southward into Lower California. 



C^"'. 



THE KIlIMlCEROS VIPER. 



In some other sections the extermination of 

 the species was probably due to the habit of 

 stock raisers in baiting carcasses with poison in 

 order to kill off carnivorous wild animals such 

 as panthers, grizzly bears, and prairie wolves. 

 As the condors, soaring aloft, most easily es- 

 pied these baits and were sociable in their habit 

 of assembling wherever carrion was to be 

 found, large numbers of them thus fell victims 



to the trap intended for predatory wild T)easts. 

 As all the best authorities on wild bird life as- 

 sert that the condor lays only one egg in a 

 season, the rate of reproduction is at best very 

 limited and when numbers fell victims to these 

 traps the species was very rapidly thinned out. 

 All these discoveries add interest to the case 

 of the specimen which the New York Zoolog- 

 ical Park now possesses and give added im- 

 portance to the intricate and detailed life record 

 of the bird, as kept by his captors from the 

 time of their discovery of the egg, twelve days 

 before the birth of "General." 



THE AFRICAN VIPERS. 



OF .\.LL the serpents exhibited in our 

 Reptile House, the most gorgeous in its 

 coloration is the Rhinoceros Viper, (Bitis 

 nasicornis). while the most hideous in config- 

 uration is the Gaboon Viper, (Bitis gabonica). 

 Both of these specimens were captured in the 

 Congo Free State, Central Africa, by Mr. S. P. 

 \'erner, of Montgomery, 

 .\labama, who has long 

 been engaged in African 

 explorations, and who 

 brought to America the 

 Pigmy "Ota Benga." 



The Rhinoceros \'iper 

 is not a large snake. Even 

 when stretched out, it meas- 

 ures only 38 inches, but it 

 is two-and-a-half inches in 

 diameter at the thickest 

 ])art of the body. The head 

 is rather small for a viper- 

 ine snake. Though it is 

 provided with two curious 

 horns upon the snout, im- 

 parting an eccentric profile, 

 it is the coloration of the 

 reptile that is most striking. 

 To any one who has not 

 seen the specimen, an ade- 

 quate and truthful descrip- 

 tion is likely to seem like 

 flowery extravagance in the 

 use of terms. 

 Owing to the roughly-keeled scales the en- 

 tire upper surface has a velvety luster. Down 

 the back is a series of large, oblong saddles, of 

 a brilliant blue: and these are set in jet-black 

 rhombs that are bordered with deep crimson. 

 On the sides are large, upright blotches, like 

 inverted V's, which are dark green, bordered 

 first with crimson, and externally with pale 

 blue. The little "ground color" showing be- 



