FROM SPAIN. 479 
heedless of all danger. None of the other European Vultures 
can be so easily lured to a carcass ; and in Spain, whenever I 
wanted to shoot vultures ata bait, the Egyptian was always 
the first to appear, often sailing round us low down and 
examining the carrion, while we were still employed either 
in laying it out or in giving the finishing touches to our 
ambush. On no occasion, however, did I notice more than 
five or six of them at a vultures’ banquet, for they never 
occur in such numbers as the Griffons; but, on the other 
hand, a few never failed to come. 
I believe that this bird does not daily undertake such long 
excursions in search of plunder as its larger relatives, and 
that it has but a limited beat; so that when a carcass is 
exposed the Egyptian Vultures belonging to the place imme- 
diately appear; while in many promising localities, which 
are generally tenanted by the large vultures, there are days 
when one does not find a single bird at home, and only after 
hours of waiting are they seen returning from a distant 
feast. In most parts of Spain the small, and therefore more 
easily satisfied, vulture finds sufficient nourishment every- 
where; for, quite independently of the fact that abundant food 
is almost daily afforded them by the dead domestic animals 
in the neighbourhood of human settlements, and especially 
by the bodies of the murdered horses that are thrown outside 
the gates of the towns after bull-fights, the people of Spain 
take absolute pains to poison the air with smaller offal and 
dirt of all kinds; so that, owing to this total absence of clean- 
liness, it is easy for the vultures to carry on a sort of scaven- 
gering of the village streets every morning. I found such 
evident traces of this unpleasant industry on the beak and 
feet of an Egyptian Vulture, that from that time I never in- 
terfered with them again, though I could have shot plenty of 
them; but after killing and measuring three specimens, I 
