IV VULTURIDAE 143 
horseman, while it will fly when hard pressed, or soar to a con- 
siderable height. The huge nest, occupied from year to year, is 
placed in a bush or tree, and is composed of sti¢ks and clay with 
a lining of wool and hair, the two or three eggs being white with 
rusty markings. Insix weeks the downy white young are hatched, 
which remain some four months in the nest, often uttering a harsh 
ery. The legs of both nestlings and adults are very fragile, and 
snap if they trip while running. 
A fossil form (S. robustus) has been recorded from the Lower 
Miocene of Allier in France. 
Fam. III. Vulturidae.—The Old-World Vultures have a strong 
hooked bill—exceptionally slender in Neophron—which may be 
sinuate, but has no tooth. They possess a horny cere ; a compara- 
tively short, stout, reticulated metatarsus, often partly feathered ; 
scutellated toes on a level, with bluntish shghtly curved claws, and 
a short membrane between the outer and mid digits. They lack 
the bony ridge found over the eye in the Falconidae. The some- 
What pointed wings are long and broad, with eleven primaries 
and from seventeen to twenty-five secondaries; the moderate tail, 
ordinarily of twelve feathers, is rounded, but varies to wedge- 
shaped in WVeophron, where, as in Gyps, there are fourteen 
rectrices. The plumage is compact; the crop prominent; the 
head and neck are bare or sparsely-haired in Otogyps and Pseudo- 
gyps, more or less downy in Vultur, Lophogyps, and Gyps, and 
partly feathered in Meophron ; while a ruff of down or plumes 
covers the shoulders. The nostrils are circular in Vultur, 
horizontally elongated in Meophron, oval and vertical else- 
where; the fleshy tongue may show bristly or upcurved 
margins, and the syrinx has two pairs of tracheo-bronchial 
muscles. Uniformly distributed down and an aftershaft charac- 
terize the adults, while the white woolly nestling of G'yps is said 
to be hatched naked.t Except as regards Veophron, the habits 
resemble those of the Cathartidae, the carrion diet producing a 
most offensive odour. The plumage of the sexes is the same. 
Vultur monachus (cinereus), the Black Vulture, has its head- 
quarters in the Mediterranean Region, whence it extends to the 
Gold Coast, Nubia, the Lower Danube, North India and China, and 
has strayed to Denmark. Not unlike the more sociable Griffon Vul- 
ture in general habits, it shows a preference for wooded country, 
1 Chapman and Buck, Wild Spain, 1893, p. 207. 
