4A: THE VULTURE. 
down upon a good dinner, disappointment would be 
their lot; and they would be regaled with nothing 
of a more solid nature than transient puffs of highly 
tainted vapour. But here I will stop: I have been 
too long on carrion, — 
—— “ Neque enim tolerare vaporem 
Ulterius potui.”’ Ovid. Met., ii. 301. 
THE VULTURE’S NOSE. 
Tae American philosophers have signed a solemn 
certificate that they feel assured that the two species 
of vultures which inhabit the United States “are 
guided to their food altogether through their sense 
of sight, and not that of smell;” I, on the contrary, 
assert that all vultures can find their food through 
the medium of their olfactory nerves, though it 
be imperceptible to their eye. 
I cannot consent to deprive the vultures of their 
noses merely on the strength of experiments which, 
from circumstances, may prove fallacious, notwith- 
standing every possible precaution; and, in the 
cases before us, I find myself constrained to dispute 
the legitimacy of the deductions at which these 
gentlemen calculate they have arrived. The efflu- 
vium from the dead hare and the offal which they 
had procured, might have been prevented from as- 
cending by the covering of brushwood; or it might 
have been depressed to the earth by humidity, or 
rc ae — tial na i tt —— ea eS ee 
