BIRDS OF PREY. 163 



their attacking them. Certainly the farmer does not 

 concern himself about such a possibility. If young 

 animals are attacked they are very helpless and have 

 probably been abandoned as dead. It may be that 

 they do not prefer putrid flesh, but they have been 

 known to be so extremely deliberate in eating a 

 skinned carcass that it was very " loud" before the 

 bones were picked clean. 



The discussion whether the sense of smell or that 

 of sight is the vulture's guidance in finding its food 

 has been brought to a close of late by the present 

 general admission that they are chiefly guided by 

 their piercing eyesight. Of course we will always 

 meet with those who will maintain the contrary. 

 Every positive statement is met thus, even the sim- 

 plest and most obvious facts being daily contradicted. 

 It is pure kindness to the bird that it has no keen 

 sense of smell, and the law that has operated and is 

 operating to bring the varied forms of life into exist- 

 ence could never have evolved a sensitive-nostrilled 

 carrion-feeder. The food must be sweet or the sense 

 of smell deadened. The conditions that operated to 

 produce an appetite for carrion, or even a willingness to 

 eat it, called necessarily for a loss of the sense of smell. 



I spent the greater part of the month of Septem- 

 ber, 1888, in Adams County, Ohio, encamped at the 

 " Serpent Mound." The turkey-buzzards were ex- 

 traordinarily abundant, and I was then struck with 

 two peculiarities I had never noticed in these birds 

 as I had observed them in New Jersey. They were 

 continually croaking, and almost as distinctly as 

 crows ; and when the water in Brush Creek was low 



