82 THE BOOK OF MIGRATORY BIRDS 



objects descending in spiral circles, and increasing in 

 visible magnitude at every revolution. These were soon 

 discovered to be a flight of vultures, which must have 

 observed from a height, viewless to the human eye, the 

 dropping of the animal immediately marked out for prey. 



An old writer, Dr. James Johnson, mentions a fact 

 illustrative of the same view. During the north-east 

 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 

 accounted for their thus congregating and appearing 

 suddenly from immense distances to their soaring high in 

 the air for the purpose of looking out for food. 



It is said in St. Matthew, as the received translation 

 gives it, that, " where the carcase is, there will the eagles 

 be gathered together,*' and in Job it is said, * 'Where the 

 slain is, there is she." Now, it is well known that the 

 eagle does not feed on carrion, and it has been proved by 

 experiment that it will not touch it unless pressed by 

 hunger (Selby). Yet Professor Paxton contends with St. 

 Jerome that the eagle is certainly meant in the text, and 

 quotes, after Bochart, the Arabian historian, Damir, who 

 asserts that the eagle can discover a carcase at a distance 

 of four hundred parasangs, with this singularity, that if 

 he finds parts of it have been previously eaten by the 

 osprey he will not touch the leavings of his inferior. This 

 circumstance makes rather against Dr. Paxton's opinion, 

 supposing the authority Damir to be good. In consequence 

 of this apparent discrepancy between facts and the text, 

 St. Chrysostom proposed to read "vultures" for "eagles" 

 in the passages both in Matthew and Job (Chrysos. Horn., 

 xlix.). Aldrovand, it would appear, has given the only 

 judicious solution of the difficulty by referring to a very 

 common Oriental species (Gypactus barbatus, Storr), 

 which was remarked by Aristotle to be similar in form to 

 the eagle, but had more the habits of the vulture, 



