VULPINITE W. 



853 



is true, the apocryphal books ; but it is clear that 

 he only considered those canonical, which are now 

 regarded as such by Protestants. 



VULPINITE. See Anhydrite. 



VULTURE (vultur}. The vultures have been 

 referred, by ornithologists, to the accipitres, or ra- 

 pacious birds, the same family with the hawks and 

 owls, although they differ in many important points. 

 The feet of the vultures are incapable of grasping 

 and bearing off living prey, although sufficiently 

 powerful to permit them to rest on trees : the 

 mouth is also much smaller, the angle not ex- 

 tending beneath the eyes ; the head is dispropor- 

 tionately small, compared with the size of the body, 

 and the neck long and slender ; the eyes are even 

 with the surface of the head : in short, their gene- 

 ral aspect is widely different from the hawks and 

 owls, and most unexpectedly approaches, in some 

 respects, the gallinaceee ; which similitude is ex- 

 pressed in many of their common names. The 

 head and neck of the vultures are more or less 

 deprived of feathers, and covered with short and 

 scattering down. The beak is straight, more or 

 less stout, and the superior mandible curved at the 

 extremity. Their wings are very long and pointed, 

 and their flight exceedingly powerful, so much so, 

 that they often soar beyond the reach of sight. 

 They are voracious and cowardly, feeding chiefly on 

 carrion, but sometimes attack young or sickly ani- 

 mals. Their bodies exhale a disgusting odour. 

 They usually live in companies ; and many of the 

 larger species do not quit the lofty chains of moun- 



tains, where they build in inaccessible places. 

 Their piercing sight enables them to discover car- 

 rion at a great distance. The condor, or great vul- 

 ture of the Andes, is particularly described in a 

 separate article. (See Condor.') The king of 

 vultures, V. papa, is about as large as a small tur- 

 key. It is found throughout the greater part of 

 tropical America. The head and neck are orna- 

 mented with brilliant colours. The general colour 

 of the plumage is reddish white, with the wings 

 and tail black. This and the preceding species are 

 remarkable for having a comb and fleshy caruncles 

 on the head of the male. Two other small species 

 of vulture are found throughout tropical America, 

 as well as in a great part of the United States, viz. the 

 turkey buzzard and the carrion crow of the South- 

 ern States. The latter is rarely found north of 

 lat. 35 ; but the former comes into the Middle 

 States. The plumage of both is black, and they 

 are much alike. In the towns and villages of the 

 Southern States, they are protected by law as 

 scavengers, and may be seen sunning themselves on 

 the roofs of houses, or sauntering about the streets, 

 as familiarly as domestic poultry. The lammergeyer 

 inhabits only the loftiest mountains of the European 

 continent. It approaches, if, indeed, it does not 

 equal, the condor in size. It differs, however, in 

 some points of structure, from the true vultures. 

 There are, besides, several other species of vulture 

 in various parts of the European continent. 

 VYASA. See Indian Literature. 



W 



W ; the twenty-third letter of the English alpha- 

 bet, representing a sound formed by opening the 

 mouth with a rounding of the lips, and a somewhat 

 strong emission of the breath. It is one of the 

 sounds which the Germans call Blaselaute (breath- 

 ing sounds.) (SeeJP.) The English pronunciation 

 of w is a peculiarity of that language, though some 

 other languages have a sound coming pretty near 

 it, as ou, in the French out : this, however, is not 

 precisely the same, as the sound of oo is heard in 

 the pronunciation of oui before the sound of our w. 

 In German, w has the sound of our v. Gram- 

 marians are not agreed respecting the character of w. 

 Doctor Webster says it is a vowel ; others say it is 

 sometimes a vowel, sometimes a consonant, like y. 

 It seems to us that it must be classified with A. 

 The Romans called the A neither a vowel nor a 

 consonant, but simply a breathing : so the w is a 

 breathing, though stronger and somewhat modified. 

 If we consider it, however, as a letter, it is un- 

 doubtedly a consonant, as much as A is, and cannot 

 Be said to be the same with the Spanish, German, 

 and Italian u, though, as stated in the article U, 

 that letter is used to indicate the pronunciation of 

 the English w. The w, being a strong breathing, 

 is nearly related to all aspirated sounds, and through 

 them again to the gutturals, so that we find w and 

 ij often interchanged in different languages, as in 

 the words William, Guillaume; Wales, Galles, &c. ; 



and we have heard Spaniards, unable to pronounce 

 w, use a g instead of it, and say guee for we. (See 

 G.) W, like other aspirates, often does not be- 

 long to the root, but only serves to strengthen the 

 tone ; for instance, the Swedish, Danish, and. Ice- 

 landic ord, English word, German wort ; the Ice- 

 landic and Swedish andra, German wandern, Eng- 

 lish wander ; the Swedish ila, German weilen (to 

 tarry,) the root of the English verb to while ; the 

 Gothic ourt, Swedish art, German wurz, the same 

 which is found in the English compounds liver-wort, 

 &c. ; the Swedish onska, in German wunschen in 

 English to wish, and so on. But w is by no means 

 always to be overlooked by the etymologist : it 

 often belongs to the root of words, and in many 

 cases it is an onomatopoeia, as in wave. It has this 

 character particularly in German, which has nume- 

 rous onomatopoeias. Wis now pronounced by the 

 Germans like our v ; but it was not always so pro- 

 nounced. It had, with the early Germans, a sound 

 composed of u and v, or /, as we may conjecture 

 from a passage of Ottfried, in his preface to the 

 Gospels (he says, Nam interdum tria u u u, ut puto, 

 qucerit in sono, priores duo consonantes, ut mihi 

 videtur, tertium vocali sono manente ;) and also from 

 the former orthography of the German words Frawe, 

 skawen, &c., now written Frau, schauen. This 

 passage of Ottfried is interesting, as respects the 

 English w. In ancient times, an A was also written 



