272 NATURAL III STORY OF BIRDS. 



al)out over tlic fu-lil until it espieil a small snake, not tliickcr than a man's finger, 

 u]>un which it at once i»ounccil. Moreover, a large an<l jditrid carcass of a hog care- 

 fully covered by canes and brush so as to be invisible, remained undiscovered by 

 the vultures in sjiite of the intolerable stench it sent out, though they frequently 

 passed by accident quite near it, and tlie d<>gs at once discovered it. Yet a small, 

 freshly-killed j>ig hidden near the same place was at once traced out by the vultures, 

 bv the blood which was allowed to run from it as it was carried to its hiding- 

 jilace. 



Bachman subsequently repeated some of these tests at Charleston, S. C, and 

 added some new anil perfectly convincing ones. The rough jjainting of a sheej), 

 skiinied antl cut ojien, soon brought vultures to examine and tug at it, and though the 

 experiment w.xs repeated scores of times it never failed, on each fresh exposure, to 

 attract the hungry birds. A wheclbarrow-load of tempting carrion was next covered 

 by a single slieet of thin canvas, above which bits of fresh meat was strewn. The 

 fresh meat was soon eaten, but although the vultures must frequently have had their 

 bills witliin an eighth of an inch of the carrion beneath, they did not discover it. 



While at Valjiaraiso in 1S34, Darwin exjierimented on twenty or thirty condors 

 wliicli were ke])t in a garden at that j)lac('. They were tied in a long row at the foot 

 of a wall, each bird by a single rt)pe, ami Darwin walked backward and forward before 

 them, at a distance of about ten feet, with a piece of fresh meat in his hand, wrapped 

 securely in a ](iece of white ]iaper. No notice whatever was taken of it by the l)ird8. 

 lie then threw it on the ground within a yard of an old male condor, who looked at 

 it carefully for a moment and paid no further attention. With a stick it w.as pushed 

 closer and closer, luitil lie touched it at last with his beak, when instantly the |)ai)er 

 was torn otf, while every bird in the long row began struggling and flajiiiing its wings. 



Tiie evidence on the other side of the question is very meagre. Darwin tells us 

 that a "gentleman mentioned at a meeting of the London Zoological Society that he 

 had twice seen the carrion-liawks in the West Indies collect on the roof of a house 

 when a corj)se had become offensive from not having been buried ;" and a case is cited 

 by Mr. Gosse in his " Birds of Jamaica," where the stench from the ])utrid contents 

 of a soup-pot in a liouse caused one vulture after another, as he passed over, to 

 descend toward the house and sometimes take several turns about it before reluctantly 

 resinning his course. There is nothing however, in either of these cases that would 

 justify us in ascribing any ninistial power of smell to the vultures even if we admit 

 that tlu'ir actions were consequent on the odors they ])crceived, for the same odors 

 were ))erfectly ])erce])tible to men in the neighborhood at fully as great a distance as 

 that at which the vultures are supposetl to have discovered them. 



On the whole, when we remember the disgusting character of much of the v\iUure's 

 food, as well as the similar odor which of necessity the bird usually bears about with 

 it, we can hardly sec how it would be possible for it to detect at a distance the 

 odor even of carrion, — much less that of jicrfectly fresh meat or of living animals. 

 The obvious Mnd simple explanation of ninety-nine one-huiidredths of these remarkable 

 discoveries was lirsi pointed out by Audubon and has been almost universally 

 accepted since. 



Probably in most regions where vidtures of any species are fairly abundant, every 

 nook and corner of the surface is carefully scrutinized many times a dav, and by many 

 ])airs of hungry eyes. Wheeling in graceful curves at varying heights, some scarcely 

 higher than the house-tops, othera only visible to the hiunau eye as mere moving 



