338 EXPERIMENTS ON THE SCENT OF VULTURES. 



attention to their habits, arid feel convinced that all birds 

 of prey are attracted to their food principally by their acute 

 sense of sight. If a vulture were blind it -would starve. If 

 birds trusted to their nostrils they would keep as near the 

 ground as possible, like the carrion crow. In watching the 

 habits of vultures (he continues) it is interesting to make the 

 experiment of concealing a dead animal beneath a dense 

 bush. Vultures will never find it unless they have witnessed 

 its death. If so they will have pounced in their descent, 

 while you have been engaged in concealing the body. If 

 an animal is killed in thick grass, 8 or 10 feet high, vultures 

 will seldom discover it. I have frequently known the bodies 

 of large animals such as elephants or buffaloes, to lie for days 

 beneath the dense nabbuk bushes, unattended by a single 

 vulture; whereas if visible they would have been visited by 

 the birds in thousands." * 



Experiments have also been made by Mr. Charles 

 Darwin and others, to test the scenting powers of the 

 vulture tribe, when in confinement. Mr. Darwin for 

 instance 



" folded up a piece of meat in paper and walked along with 

 it in his hand close to a line of condors, but they detected 

 nothing; next he threw it on the ground within a yard of 

 an old male bird. He looked at it for a moment, and then 

 regarded it no more. With a stick he pushed it closer, till 

 at last the bird touched it with his beak. The paper was 

 then instantly torn off with fury, and at the same moment 

 every bird began struggling and flapping to get at it. Under 

 the same circumstances it would have been quite impossible 

 to deceive a dog." 



Mr. Darwin then goes on to relate a series of experi- 

 ments tried by Mr. Buchanan of the U.S. with turkey 

 buzzards. 



* The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia, by Sir Samuel White Baker, 

 pp. 192 to 194. 



