COL Y—CONDOR IOI 
green Amazons beauty, intelligence, and safety by protection are 
combined. ‘The often surprising adaptation of the coloration of the 
plumage to the surroundings is well known. Frequently the con- 
spicuously coloured parts are hidden when the bird is at rest, and 
are only exposed or shewn—occasionally as “danger signals,” to 
use Mr. Wallace’s excellent term—when the bird is on the wing. 
It cannot be doubted that the sense of colour is highly developed 
in birds, perhaps most so in the female when choosing a mate; 
the result of this sexual selection being constantly regulated by 
natural selection is exhibited most by the male, but enjoyed by both 
sexes, and for the benefit of the whole race. 
COLY, Pennant’s rendering of the French Coliou, adapted 
by Brisson from Mohring’s Colius ; which, according to Cuvier, is 
the Greek xoAovds (see MOUSE-BIRD). 
CONDOR, the Spanish way of writing the Peruvian Cuntur, the 
Vultur gryphus of Linneus and Sarcorhamphus gryphus of recent 
authors, one of the largest of volant birds. The accounts given by 
early travellers of its size and ferocity were so obviously exagger- 
ated that the cautious Ray would not admit it into Willughby’s 
Ornithology, and only included it in his own Synopsis Avium (p. 11) 
after proof that such a bird existed had reached him in the shape 
of one of its wing-quills brought by Capt. Strong to Sir Hans 
Sloane from the coast of Chili. Nearly a century passed before 
European ornithologists saw a complete specimen. This was a 
female which Capt. Middleton brought from the Strait of 
Magellan and deposited in the Leverian Museum, where it was 
figured in 1791 by Shaw (Mus. Lev. No. 1, p. 4, pl.) Shortly 
after, a second specimen, this time an adult male, found its way 
from the same quarter to the same Museum, and was also figured 
in 1793 by the same author (op. cit. No. 6, p. 4, pl.)! But the 
species was little known on the continent, until in 1806 when 
Humboldt communicated his classical Mémoire on the bird to the 
French Institute, and as he was certainly the first scientific man 
who had made its personal acquaintance in life,” his account of it 
deserves the attention with which it has met, and the voracity, 
stupidity, and tenacity of life of this huge Vulture have through 
him been long known to the world. Its habits have perhaps been 
since more fully described by Darwin in his Journal, though that 
account of them seems to have been unknown to the latest writer 
on the subject, Taczanowski (Ornithol. Pérou, i. pp. 75-80), who 
quotes only from D’Orbigny and Stolzmann. Yet a good many 
1 Both these specimens passed into the Museum of Vienna, where they are 
now preserved (Von Pelzeln, Jbis, 1873, p. 16). 
2 As Broderip well remarks Molina can hardly have seen the bird, which he, 
like Buffon, took to be the same as the LAMMERGEYER. 
