Personal Cleanliness 389 
kept a young Griffon for over two and a half years; during 
that time it not only was never in the least offensive but kept 
its plumage in the finest condition imaginable. A great bather, 
its chief delight was to be played upon with a garden _ hose, 
when it would expand its wings and gyrate slowly so as to let the 
water strike every part of its body. <A favourite position was to 
throw itself on one side and expand the disengaged wing so that 
the water could strike its axillaries with force ; after some minutes 
of this treatment it would turn round and similarly expand the 
other wing for a like course of spraying. 
For the purposes of our national and other collections I have 
from time to time killed and skinned Vultures and Eagles of 
various sorts, and my experience is that, apart from their food, 
there is little to chose between the two classes of birds. A 
Vulture that has not recently had a big meal is in itself, no more 
unpleasant to handle than is any other big raptorial bird. In fact 
I have had far more trying times when engaged in preserving 
the body of an Eagle, especially of the type which habitually feed 
upon snakes and big lizards, than when similarly engaged over a 
Vulture. All the same, I have no particular desire to repeat the 
process in either case. 
The fascination which large birds and especially large raptorial 
birds have ever had for me would be difficult to explain. From 
the moment when I first saw Vultures on the wing I became 
obsessed with the desire to find their nests and see them at home. 
I had nobody to put me in the way of this, as I have done for 
others since, and I had to work on my own lines with no help 
and much discouragement, since I was at the time ignorant of the 
language of the country, and my birdsnesting proclivities were 
viewed with pity, tinged possibly with just a little contempt, by not 
a few of my more enlightened brother officers. 
Naturally enough, | directed my quest in the first instance to 
