NOTE-BOOK OF A NATURALIST. « 



confinement — a confinement which must be peculiarly 

 irksome and unnatural to a bird, the greater portion of 

 Avhose free life is spent on the wing, sailing in the higher 

 regions of the atmosphere, far above the throne of clouds 

 of the 



Giant of the western star, 



appear to enjoy good health, proofs of which have been 

 given in their attempts to continue the species notwith- 

 standingf their unfavourable situation. 



In a state of nature the eggs of the condor are said to 

 rest on the rock, ^\dthout stick or straw, and unprotected 

 by any border. There, at an elevation of from ten to 

 fifteen thousand feet above the level of the sea, on such 

 ledges and plateaux as ' The Condor's Look-out,' ' The 

 Condor's Nest,' ' The Condor's Roost,' the nesthng first 

 breathes the highly-rarefied air. A year elapses, it is 

 asserted, before the downy young one is sufficiently 

 plumed to leave the mother. About the end of the 

 second year the colour is a yellowish-brown, and, up to 

 this time, the gollila or ruff is not visible, whence pro- 

 bably arises the notion that there are two species of 

 condors, one black (the colour of the adult), and one 

 brown. Flying to a more lofty pitch than any other 

 bird, and reduced in the sight of the upward gazer, amid 

 the gTand and gigantic scenery, to the size of hawks, 

 they wheel round, keeping their telescopic eyes on the 

 valleys, watching for the fall of some failing horse or 

 cow. Then down come the condors to the feast. In 

 their daintiness they generally begin with the tongue 

 and the eyes, but the rage of a hunger sharpened by days 

 of watching on the wing, in the eager air of a very high 

 altitude, is not easily appeased. The bird, rioting in the 

 midst of the plentiful table which death has spread for it 

 in the wilderness, after tearing up the hide with its 

 trenchant beak, carves out and swallows gobbet after 

 gobbet, till it is so gorged as to be unable to raise itself 



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