NOTE-BOOK OF A NATURALIST. 11 



that eight or ten balls might be heard to strike without 

 penetrating, or, at least, bringing do^vn the bird. 



Not that we give credence to the stories of the condors 

 canying off children — indeed the evidence is against such 

 a statement; and still less do we believe the accounts of 

 their attacking men and women. At all events, Sir 

 Francis Head has j)roved that a Cornish miner is a 

 match for one of these great vultures. Humboldt allows 

 that two of them would be dangerous foes when opposed 

 to one man ; but he frequently came within ten or twelve 

 feet of the rock on which three or four of them were 

 perched, and they never offered to molest him. Indeed 

 the Alpine lammergeyer,* the Phene of Aristotle and 

 iElian, is little inferior, if not equal, to the condor in size, 

 and like the condor haunts great mountain-chains. As 

 the condor is the great vulture of the New World, this 

 vulture-eagle holds its throne on the lofty precipices of 

 the old continent. On the Swiss and German Alps, 

 from Piedmont to Dalmatia, in the Pyrenees, in the 

 mountains of Ghilan and Siberia, of Egypt and Abys- 

 sinia, this, the largest of the European birds of prey, is 

 on the watch to scourge the country. With more of the 

 eagle than the vidture in its composition, and with claws 

 more fit for rapine than the nails of the condor, it 

 generally seeks for a living prey, and, soaring with its 

 mate above the hills and valleys, pounces upon the 

 lambs and other quadrupeds. The stories of its having 

 carried off children in*its crooked talons wear a much 

 greater air of probability than such tales when applied 

 to the condor, with its comparatively impotent foot. 

 The strength of the lammergeyer and its conformation 

 are quite equal to such murderous acts ; for a full-grown 

 one is four feet from beak to tail, and nine or ten in alar 

 extent. But the lammergeyer contents itself mth a dead 



* Gyp'detus barbatus, Storr. 



