806 HISTORY OF CALIFORNIA. 



though, like the vultures of the eastern hemisphere, it 

 is more northerly in the summer than in the winter. 

 Their general color is brown, without any very decided 

 markings ; they nestle in the thick woods, choosing 

 the tallest pines in the wildest and most inaccessible 

 parts of the mountain valleys. The nest is composed 

 of sticks and coarse grass, and the pair occupy it for 

 many years in succession. The eggs are two, of a jet 

 black color, nearly round, and about the size of those 

 of a goose. The hatching time is about the first of 

 June, and the incubation lasts about thirty days. The 

 young are at first covered with whitish down, and five 

 or six weeks elapse before they are able to quit the 

 nest. 



Where these birds inhabit is truly a Vulture's coun 

 try, as the turns of the seasons are particularly violent 

 both on land and at sea. Many land animals are 

 beaten down by the rains, or overtaken by the swell 

 ing rivers ; and when the storm abates, the wreck 

 both of the land and the water is great. This is in 

 discriminately eaten by the vultures, which make 

 common prize both of fishes and of land animals, and 

 heed not much how far they may be gone in putrefac 

 tion. Their senses are keen, especially their sense 

 of sight, and we shall not enter upon the disputed 

 keenness of the sense of smell in vultures, which, to 

 say the best, appears to have been most gratuitously 

 exaggerated. When on the reconnoitre, or tracking 

 the progress of a wounded animal, they fly very high ; 

 and, though there may not be one in sight when it 

 falls, the carcass of a large animal speedily attracts a 

 number of vultures ; and they come to a recent car 

 case just as readily as to a tainted one, to that which 

 does not smell with the same readiness as to that 



