68 Bibliographical Notice. 
is not always easy to understand which of the partners is speaking 
in the first person singular; while the notes on bird-life in the 
marisma as well as in the mountains will be recognized as princi- 
pally due to Mr. Chapman. Most ornithologists are aware that he 
was the first of our countrymen who obtained absolute proof of the 
manner in which the Flamingo nests, having waded under a burning 
sun for long distances through mud and water in order to sketch these 
wary birds actually sitting on their nests. That the old statement 
respecting the bird’s position astride was an easily explained fable 
had for some time been the opinion of those persons who had given 
the matter a thought; but it was Mr. Chapman who proved the 
correctness of these surmises, and the accuracy of his descriptions 
have been corroborated by the subsequent observations made by Sir 
H. H. Blake, when Governor of the Bahamas. Among the happiest 
of the many illustrations are those relating to the flamingoes, stilts, 
avocets, herons, ducks, &c., which inhabit the great marshes forming 
the delta of the Guadalquivir, and known as the marisma; while 
the sketches of birds of prey, both in the plain and on the mountain, 
leave nothing to be desired. The attitudes of the vultures, whether 
at their nesting-places, banquets, or on the wing, are admirable; 
and even should exception be taken to a little hardness in plate 
xxyv., its deficiencies from the artistic point of view may well be 
pardoned in consideration of the spirit and fidelity with which the 
evolutions of the assembling vultures are rendered. There is also 
an illustration of a soaring Gypaétus barbatus carrying a snake in 
its talons: the bird passed slowly along the line of the sportsmen 
in the Sierra Bermeja and appeared to have about “four feet of 
writhing reptile ” dangling beneath it. Some interesting particulars 
are given respecting this handsome species, persistently styled 
“« Lammergeyer ” [sc] by the authors, who prefer, for some inscru- 
table reason, a mis-spelt German word to a descriptive English term. 
As a rule the German name is, even when correctly spelled, some- 
what misleading, for the Bearded Vulture, as we prefer to call the bird, 
feeds chiefly on bones (which it smashes by dropping them from a 
height), carrion, and—especially in India—the foulest garbage; 
but there appears to be strong evidence that during the breeding- 
season the bird is destructive to very young kids and lambs: while 
Manuel de la Torre, of Madrid, whose accuracy is unimpeachable, 
has actually seen one of these birds kill a rabbit. The above 
animals, small though they are, would probably be torn to pieces 
and swallowed on the spot, for we do not think that this 
species could carry off in its clutches anything exceeding a few 
pounds in weight. Moreover, Gypaétus barbatus certainly has a 
way of coming sharply round the edge of a cliff, and that it might 
frighten or even knock a kid off a narrow ledge we have no doubt 
whatever ; indeed its sudden apparition, when a man is holding on 
with both hands, is sufficiently startling, and under such circum- 
stances the bird will sometimes sweep past far more closely than at 
other times ; but we never knew it to attack anybody, or to defend 
its nest even when it had young. 
