VISION. 233 



travelling map, had found his way from Point de 

 Gat to Gibraltar, a distance of more than two hun- 

 dred miles, through a mountainous and intricate 

 country, intersected by streams, which he had never 

 traversed before, and in so short a period that he 

 could not have made one false turn. His not hav- 

 ing been stopped on the road was attributed to the 

 circumstance of his having been formerly used to 

 whip criminals upon, which was indicated to the 

 peasants (who have a superstitious horror of such 

 asses) by the holes in his ears, to which the per- 

 sons flogged were tied. 



It would appear, from an observation of Profes- 

 sor Lichenstein, that birds which feed on carrion 

 may probably resort to making circular flights, simi- 

 lar to the pigeon, in order to discover a carcass. He 

 remarked, when travelling in Southern Africa, that 

 if an animal chanced to die in the very midst of the 

 most desert wilderness, in less than half an hour 

 there was seen high in the zenith a number of mi- 

 nute objects descending in spiral circles, and in- 

 creasing in visible magnitude at every revolution. 

 These were soon discovered to be a flight of vul- 

 tures, which must have observed from a height, 

 viewless to the human eye, the dropping of the ani- 

 mal immediately marked out for prey. 



Dr. James Johnson mentions a fact illustrative of 

 the same view. During the northeast monsoon, 

 when the wind blew steadily in one point for months 

 in succession, he observed a concourse of birds of 

 prey from every point of the horizon hastening to 

 a corpse that was floating down the river Ganges ; 

 and he accounts for their thus congregating, and 

 appearing suddenly from immense distances, to 

 their soaring high in the air for the purpose of look- 

 ing out for food. 



It is said in St. Matthew, as the received transla- 

 tion gives it, that " where the carcass is, there will 

 U 2 



