254 PHYSIOGNOMY OP PLANTS. 



minimum of this angle. The transparency of the mountain atmo- 

 sphere at the Equator is such that, in the province of Quito, as I have 

 elsewhere noticed, the white mantle or Poncho of a horseman was 

 distinguished with the naked eye at a horizontal distance of 84,132 

 (89,665 English) feet; therefore under a visual angle of 13 seconds. 

 It was my friend Bonpland, whom, from the pleasant country seat 

 of the Marques de Selvalegre, we saw moving along the face of a 

 black precipice on the Volcano of Pichincha. Lightning conductors, 

 being long thin objects, are seen, as has already been remarked by 

 Arago, from the greatest distances, and under the smallest angles. 



The accounts of the habits of the Condor in the mountainous 

 districts of Quito and Peru, given by me in a monograph on this 

 powerful bird, have been confirmed by a later traveller, Gay, who 

 has explored the whole of Chili, and has described that country in 

 an excellent work entitled Historia fisica y politica de Chile. The 

 Condor, which, like the Lamas, Vicunas, Alpacas, and Guanacos, 

 does not extend beyond the Equator into New Granada, is found as 

 far south as the Straits of Magellan. In Chili, as in the mountain 

 plains of Quito, the Condors, which at other times live either soli- 

 tarily or in pairs, assemble in flocks to attack lambs and calves, or 

 to carry off young Guanacos (Guanacillos). The ravages annually 

 committed among the herds of sheep, goats, and cattle, as well as 

 among the wild Vicunas, Alpacas, and Guanacos of the Andes, are 

 very considerable. The inhabitants of Chili assert that, in captivity, 

 the Condor can support forty days' hunger ; when free, his voracity 

 is excessive, and, vulture-like, is directed by preference to dead flesh. 



The mode of capture of Condors in Peru by means of palisades, 

 as described by me, is practiced with equal success in Chili. When 

 the bird has gorged himself with flesh, he cannot rise into the air 

 without first running for some little distance- with his wings half ex- 

 panded. A dead ox, in which decomposition is beginning to take 

 place, is strongly fenced round, leaving within the fence only a small 

 space, in which the Condors attracted by the prey are crowded toge- 

 ther. WJien they have gorged themselves with food, the palisades 

 not permitting them to obtain a start by running, they become, as 

 remarked above, unable to rise, and are either killed with clubs by 

 the country people, or taken alive by the lasso. On the first decla,- 



