NEOPHRON PERCNOPTERUS. 3 



that has not yet seen the day, states that " the percmplerus makes 

 its nest at the end of March, in the crevices and in the caves of rocks, 

 usually in inaccessible places in a perpendicular cliff. It lays in the 

 month of April, one or two eggs of a variable form. It hatches at the 

 end of May ; and the young (always one or two in number) are not of 

 age to take their flight until July/' The " one or two eggs " agrees 

 with the account of M. Moquin-Tandon, and of that given by Bruce 

 (Travels to the Sources of the Nile, App. p. 164) ; but the time 

 spent in the nest does not come up to the " four months " of Bruce, 

 though, from the small size of the eg^, we might expect it to be 

 long. The Condor, the Black Vulture, and probably most Vultures, 

 appear to lay two eggs only ; and it is also said of them that they make 

 no nest (Darwin, ' Zoology of the " Beagle " Voyage,' part iii. p. 4 ; 

 Audubon, ' Ornithological Biography,' vol. ii. p. 54). Does our bird 

 form its own nest ? In Barbary, the Egyptian Vulture probably breeds 

 only in the mountains of the interior, as it was not known to Mr. 

 John Drummond-Hay, then Her Britannic Majesty's Consul at Tan- 

 gier. Mr. Hewitson writes, " I have not the slightest doubt of the 

 authenticity of this egg." From Mr. Wilmot I have heard also of 

 two other eggs of this bird, — one laid in some Zoological Garden, and 

 figured in Lefevre's '^ Atlas des CEufs des Oiseaux d'Europe,' the 

 other brought from Egypt by a Scotch physician. I should add that 

 M. Favier's account of the nidification is partly worded after that of 

 Temminck (Man. d'Orn. i. p. 10)*. 



[M. Moquin-Tandon has some very instructive notes on the nidification of 

 this species in the ' Re\iie et Magasin de Zoologie ' for November 1857, p. 491.] 



§ 2. One, — Tangier, April 1845. From M. Favier's Collection, 

 1847. 



O. W., tab. 1. fig. 3. 



This egg I bought, among some others, of IVIr. Williams of Oxford 

 Street. I saw M. Favier's marks on nearly all of them, and I did 

 not doubt they were all from him originally. From the writing upon 

 it, it is evidently one of those I saw at Tangier. 



* A curious geological event happened in consequence of M. Fa^-ier's oological 

 inclinations. A huge mass of sand-rock was pointed out to me, underneath which 

 were said to lie the remains of foui' men who had been engaged in robbing a nest 

 for him, when the mass gave way and rolled upon them. It had been under- 

 mined for several years by the crumbling away of tlie clay on which it rested con- 

 formably ; and as it is the last feather that breaks the camel's back, so the weio-ht 

 of these four men determined the moment of the fall of the huge cliff. All the 

 powers of Tangier could not get them from beneatli it. 



R 9. 



