VIRGIN'S BOWER VULTURE. 



like the boa, crotalus, and echis. They have the head 

 short, and covered with large plates, and the occiput 

 broad ; they have also a keel of enlarged longitudinal 

 scales along the back. Their most remarkable cha- 

 racter, however, is the compound structure of the 

 mouth, which has the maxillary teeth of the swallow- 

 ing serpents and the fangs of the poisonous ones in 

 the same row upon the same bones. These fangs 

 are of course not worked in the same way as those 

 which have the poison fangs apart. Serpents of this 

 description are natives of the East, where they are 

 sometimes called rock serpents. Some of them grow 

 to the length of six or seven feet. 



VIRGIN'S BOWER, is the Clematis flammula of 

 Linnaeus, a common ornamental climbing shrub in 

 gardens. 



VISCUM (Linnaeus). The V. album, the white 

 misseltoe, is one of the most remarkable English 

 vegetable productions, and often noticed in the Drui- 

 dical history of the country. It is a perfect parasite, 

 fixing itself on the stem or branches of other trees, 

 and subsisting on their sap. The unisexual flowers 

 are on different plants, and where these are acci- 

 dentally intermixed, the female plants bear abund- 

 ance of white viscid berries, forming the principal 

 winter food of the missel thrush. When a mis- 

 seltoe is found on an oak, the whole tree was formerly 

 considered sacred by the superstitious votaries of other 

 days, and solemn rites were performed in the shade 

 of the tree. The seed, stuck upon the smooth bark of 

 any tree suitable to its growth, strike root readily. The 

 whitethorn, crab apple, lime, and several others, are 

 frequently seen garnished with misseltoe. The plant 

 belongs to the small order Lorantheec, which receives 

 its title from the Lorantlie of the tropics, a plant of 

 similar character with the Viscitms. 



VOLUCELLA (Geoffroy). A genus of large di- 

 pterous insects, belonging to the family Syrp/iidee, 

 having the body short, robust, often hairy, and much 

 resembling humble-bees ; the antennal seta is plumose, 

 the third joint oblong ; the larvae of several of the 

 species reside in the nests of JJombi (humble bees), being 

 parasites ; and hence it is that we find them clothed 

 in a garb very much resembling the insects upon 

 which they are parasitic, so as, in fact, to deceive 

 their fosterers, and permit them to enter their nests 

 unmolested. The type is the Musca inanis of Lin- 

 naeus. There are four other British species. 



VOMIT NUT is the fruit of the Strychnns nux- 

 vomica, a plant having pentandrous flowers, and be- 

 longing to the natural order Apocynece, a native of the 

 East Indies. In our collections it is a stove plant, 

 and propagated without difficulty. 



VULTURE (Vultur). A genus, or more cor- 

 rectly, VulturidcB, a family, of diurnal birds of prey, 

 differing from the Falcomdce, or hawks, eagles, &c., 

 in being not so much regulators of the numbers of 

 living birds and small quadrupeds, as cleansers of the 

 earth from the dead bodies of such as have perished 

 by other means. They are the winged scavengers of 

 the land, par excellence, just as the storks are the 

 scavengers of the inland waters, the gulls on the 

 shores of the sea, and the petrels upon the broad 

 waters. 



They are in some measure geographically reversed 

 upon the other grand division of the Accipitrcs. The 

 head-quarters of that division are in the north ; and 

 though they are not absolutely wanting in any one 

 latitude, the species in the tropical countries are com- 



paratively few and feeble; and those of the higher 

 latitudes of the south are not very many in compari- 

 son with what are found in the north. 



The vultures, on the other hand, have their head- 

 quarters under the equator ; they are, latitude for 

 latitude, more numerous in the southern hemisphere 

 than in the northern ; and in the very high latitudes 

 of the latter there are none. It must not here be 

 inferred, however, that the vultures are birds of deli- 

 cate constitution, capable of living only in the warm 

 regions of the world. They are the very reverse of 

 this ; their office in nature is a rough one, and they 

 are organised and tempered for " roughing it" through 

 life. In their highest latitudes they are birds of the 

 cold and wild mountains, neighbours to the perennial 

 snow ; and they very rarely descend to the plains, 

 and when they do it is only as stragglers, or rather 

 as strays, wholly out of their proper place. 



Regions, where the weather is in extremes, not the 

 extremes of summer heat and winter cold, as we lind 

 them in the polar countries, but the shorter and more 

 violent changes of the weather, and the conflicts ot'raiu 

 and drought, occasion that kind of devastation which 

 finds food for the vultures,and calls them in to clear the 

 surface of corrupting matter which cannot be removed 

 by animals of any other kind. Hyaenas and jackalls 

 may do the work very well in the plains, or in those 

 tropical woods where the violence of the changes of 

 weather causes a frequent destruction of animal life ; 

 but no animal having only feet as organs of motion 

 could travel over the Alps or the Andes, or any other 

 lofty ridge of mountains, where the food that is for 

 them might be encircled by precipices thousands of 

 feet in height. Nor is it much better in some of the 

 more tangled forests, where the openings in which 

 the dead bodies of animals are most likely to be 

 found, are parted from each other by trees of moun- 

 tain height, and fairly barricaded against the passage 

 of an animal on foot, except at so slow a rate, as that 

 it would inevitably perish in toiling from the place cf 

 one meal to that of another. The food is there, and 

 the general principle of " no waste," which is so easily 

 traceable through the whole of Nature, demands that 

 as there is food there should also be feeders regu- 

 lated to its quantity, and adapted for reaching it with 

 the least possible exertion. Did our limits admit, we 

 could very easily show that the vultures are the very 

 animals who can perform this duty in Nature in the 

 very best manner. They are birds of immense wing 

 in proportion to the weight of their bodies ; their 

 flesh is tough and rigid; their plumage is so -little 

 liable to be injured by the weather, that nothing ap- 

 pears to agree better with them than thorough soak- 

 ings and alternate exposures to wet and dry, as even 

 in confinement they frequently wash themselves 

 thoroughly, arid hang out their wings to the sun and 

 air to be dried. They can also endure hunger for 

 very long periods of time ; and when they do meet 

 with a prize in the way of food, they can gorge to an 

 extent equal to that of the great crushing serpents ; 

 in fact, till they lie benumbed on the ground for a 

 considerable time. But these surfeits, as they would 

 not fail to be in the case of an animal that fed fre- 

 quent and moderately, do not appear to injure the 

 species which naturally practise them. The time of 

 inactivity after the full meal appears to be a time of 

 great renovation of the system ; and the matter thus 

 obtained appears to be capable of performing the func- 

 tions of life for a long time without a fresh renewal. 



