32 THE TURKEY BUZZARD. 
the eyes, that were here solid globes of hard dried 
and painted clay, attacked first one and then the 
other, with, however, no further advantage than 
that of disarranging them. This part was aban- 
doned; the bird walked to the other extremity of 
the pretended animal, and there, with much exer- 
tion, tore the stitches apart, until much fodder and 
dry hay was pulled out, but no flesh could the bird 
find or smell; he was intent on discovering some 
where none existed; and, after reiterated efforts, 
all useless, he took flight, coursed about the field, 
when, suddenly rounding and falling, I saw him 
” kill a small garter snake, and swallow it in an in- 
stant. The vulture rose again, sailed about, and 
passed several times quite low over my stuffed 
deerskin, as if loth to abandon so good-locking a 
prey.” The author continues: — “Judge of my 
feelings when I plainly saw that the vulture, which 
could not discover, through its extraordinary sense 
of smell, that no flesh, either fresh or putrid, existed 
about the skin, could, at a glance, see a snake, 
scarcely as large as a man’s finger, alive, and des- 
titute of odour, hundreds of yards distant.” 
In this first experiment, we are left in such 
uncertainty, with regard to the actual distance of 
the vulture from the author, at the time the vulture 
killed the snake, that I cannot, for the life of me, 
come to any satisfactory conclusion. It appears, 
that there was a tree about forty yards from the 
stuffed deerskin. Under covert of the tree, the 
author watched the predatory attack of the vulture 
on the skin. The disappointed bird took flight, 
and coursed about the field, which the author tells 
