184 By Leafy Ways. 



It is a treeless waste ; no mountains even, except as 

 a dim line on the horizon ; but hardly has the dying 

 beast sunk down, when from every side, coming out of 

 the clear blue heaven, are seen those tiny specks that 

 dilating as they fly, grow into great evil-looking vul- 

 tures swiftly descending to the feast ; while the sur- 

 vivors, knowing well the ominous rush of those terrible 

 wings, press on with eager haste, throwing fearful 

 glances back, and wondering if the morrow's dawn 

 will shine upon their whitened bones one more link 

 in that fatal chain of skeletons that marks the way 

 across the waste. 



It was long supposed that the marvellous power of 

 the vulture in discovering a dead body lay in its sense 

 of smell. A writer of the thirteenth century, in speak- 

 ing of the faculties of animals, gravely asserts that a 

 vulture can smell a carcase at a distance of 500 miles. 

 Others, bolder still, declared it was no matter even if 

 the sea should intervene. 



The experiments of Darwin, Audubon, and others, 

 however, have shown that birds depend much more 

 on sight than smell, if indeed the latter faculty plays 

 any appreciable part at all. Captive vultures have 

 been known even to stand upon the canvas which 

 concealed a piece of putrid meat, without discovering 

 what lay beneath it until the covering was purposely 

 torn. 



The condor the great vulture of the Andes has 

 been known to fly at a height of 15,000 feet. Perhaps 



