AVES CATHARTID^. 545 



and March ; there is no attempt at nest building, only a hollow worn by the 

 birds turning in the sandy ground, and two eggs are the usual number laid. 

 "These birds," says Darwin (Voy. Beagle, Birds, pp. 7-8), "I believe 

 are never found further south than the neighborhood of the Rio Negro, in 

 latitude 41°; I never saw one in southern Patagonia, or in Tierra del Fuego. 

 They appear to prefer damp places, especially the vicinity of rivers ; and 

 thus, although abundant at the Rio Negro and Colorado, they are not 

 found on the intermediate plains. Azara states that there existed a tra- 

 dition in his time, that on the first arrival of the Spaniards in the Plata, 

 these birds were not found in the neighborhood of Monte Video, but that 

 they subsequently followed the inhabitants from more northern districts. 

 M. Al. D'Orbigny, in reference to this statement, observes that these vul- 

 tures, although common on the northern bank of the Plata, and likewise 

 on the rivers south of it, are not found in the neighborhood of Buenos 

 Ayres, where the immense slaughtering establishments are attended by 

 infinite numbers of Polybori and gulls. M. D'Orbigny supposes that their 

 absence is owing to the scarcity of trees and bushes in the Pampas ; but 

 this view, I think, will hardly hold good, inasmuch as the country near 

 Bahia Blanca, where the Gallinazo (together with the carrion-feeding gull) 

 is common, is as bare, if not more so, than the plains near Buenos Ayres. 

 I have never seen the Gallinazo in Chile ; and Molina, who was aware of 

 the difference between the C. atratus and C. aura, has not noticed it ; yet, 

 on the opposite side of the Cordillera, near Mendoza, it is common. 

 They do not occur in Chiloe, or on the west coast of the continent south 

 of that island. In Wilson's Ornithology it is said that ' the carrion crow 

 (as this bird is called in the United States) is seldom found on the Atlantic 

 to the northward of Newbern, lat. 35° North Carolina.' But in Richard- 

 son's "Fauna Boreali- Americana," it is mentioned, on the authority of Mr. 

 David Douglas, that on the Pacific side of the continent it is common on 

 the marshy islands of the Columbia,^ and in the neighborhood of Lewis's 

 and Clark's rivers (45°-47° N.) It has, therefore, a wider range in the 

 northern than in the southern half of the continent. These vultures cer- 

 tainly are gregarious ; for they seem to have pleasure in each other's 

 society, and are not solely brought together by the attraction of a common 



1 This record is unsubstantiated by subsequent study of the region here alluded to, and the 

 black vulture, as has before been stated, has yet to be recorded from the Pacific coasts of Mexico 

 and the United States.— fK E. D. Scott. 



