172 SENSE OF SMELL. 



opposition to, their nature. The hound amongst quadrupeds affords us 

 a familiar example of the extreme delicacy of this sense. For hours 

 after the passage of game, it is capable of detecting its traces; and the 

 bloodhound can be trained to indicate the human footsteps with unerr- 

 ing certainty. 



Until of late years, it was almost universally believed, that many of 

 the birds of prey possess an astonishingly acute sense of smell. Hum- 

 boldt 1 relates, that in Peru, Quito, and in the province of Popayan, 

 when they are desirous of taking the gigantic condor Vultur gryphus 

 of Linnaeus they kill a cow, or horse, and in a short time, the odour 

 of the dead animal attracts those birds in numbers, and in places where 

 they were scarcely known to exist. It is asserted, too, that vultures 

 went from Asia to the field of battle at Pharsalia, a distance of several 

 hundred miles, attracted thither by the smell of the killed! 2 Pliny, 3 

 however, exceeds almost all his contemporaries in his assertions on this 

 matter. He affirms, that the vulture and the raven have the sense of 

 smell so delicate, that they can foretell the death of a man three days 

 beforehand, and in order not to lose their prey they arrive upon the 

 spot the night before his dissolution! The turkey-buzzard of the 

 United States is a bird of this class, and it is surprising to see how 

 soon they collect from immense distances after an animal has died in 

 the forests. The observations and experiments of the ornithologist 

 Audubon 4 would seem, however, to show that this bird possesses the 

 sense of smell in a less degree than the carnivorous quadruped. He 

 stuffed the skin of a deer with hay, and after the whole had become 

 perfectly dry and hard, placed it in an open field on its back, and in 

 the attitude of a dead animal. In the course of a few minutes a vul- 

 ture was observed flying towards it, which alighted near, and began to 

 attack it; tearing open the seams, and pulling out the hay; but finding 

 that it could obtain nothing congenial to its taste, it took flight. It 

 was found, too, that when animals in an advanced state of putridity 

 were lightly covered over so as to prevent vultures from seeing them, 

 they remained undisturbed and undiscovered, although the birds re- 

 peatedly flew over them. In some other experiments it was found, 

 that birds of prey were attracted by well-executed representations of 

 dead animals painted on canvass and exposed in the fields, and in 

 others, that young vultures, enclosed in a cage, exhibited no tokens of 

 their perceiving food, when it could not be seen by them, however near 

 them it was brought. These results which were obtained, also, by 

 Dr. Bachman in the presence of a number of scientific gentlemen of 

 Charleston, South Carolina are strange, inasmuch as the olfactory 

 apparatus of the turkey-buzzard, when examined by the comparative 

 anatomist, exhibits great development, and admirable adaptation for 

 acuteness of smell. They are confirmed, however, by more recent expe- 

 riments on the condor by Mr. Charles Darwin, 5 a distinguished natu- 



1 Rec. de Zoolog. ejt d'Anat. Comp., 2de livr., p. 73, Paris, 1807. 



9 Haller, edit, cit., torn, v. lib. xiv. p. 158. a Hist. Nat., lib. x. cap. 6, p. 230, Lugd. 1587. 

 4 Ornithological Biography, p. 33, Boston, 1835; London's Mag. of Nat. Hist., vii. 167. 

 s Journal of Researches into the Natural History and Geography of the countries visited 

 during the voyage of H. M. S. Beagle round the World. Amer. edit., New York, 1846. 



