THE VULTURE. 



when they see the beast flayed and abandoned, 

 they call out to each other, pour down upon 

 the carcase, and, in an instant, pick its bones 

 as bare and clean as if they had been scraped 

 by a knife. 



At the Cape of Good Hope, in Africa, they 

 seem to discover a still greater share of dexte- 

 rity in their methods of carving. " I have," 

 says Kolben, " been often a spectator of the 

 manner in which they have anatomized a dead 

 body : I say anatomized ; for no artist in the 

 world could have done it more cleanly. They 

 have a wonderful method of separating the 

 flesh from the bones, and yet leaving the skin 

 quite entire. Upon coming near the carcass, 

 one would not suppose it thus deprived of its 

 internal substance, till he began to examine it 

 more closely ; he then finds it, literally speak- 

 ing, nothing but skin and bone. Their man- 

 ner of performing the operation is this : they 

 first make an opening in the belly of the ani- 

 mal, from whence they pluck out, and gree- 

 dily devour, the entrails : then entering into 

 the hollow which they have made, they sepa- 

 rate the flesh from the bones, without ever 

 touching the skin. It often happens that an 

 ox returning home alone to its stall from the 

 plough, lies down by the way ; it is then, if 

 the vultures perceive it, that they fall with 

 fury down, and inevitably devour the unfortu- 

 nate animal. They sometimes attack them 

 grazing in the fields ; and then to the number 

 of a hundred or more, make their attack all at 

 once and together." 



; ' They are attracted by carrion," says Ca- 

 tesby, " from a very great distance. It is 

 pleasant to behold them, when they are thus 

 eating and disputing for their prey. An 

 eagle generally presides at these entertain- 

 ments, and makes them all keep their distance 

 till he has done. They then fall to with an 

 excellent appetite ; and their sense of smell- 

 ing is so exquisite, that the instant a carcass 

 drops, we may see the vultures floating in the 

 air from all quarters, and come sousing on 

 their prey." It is supposed by some, that 

 they eat nothing that has life ; but this is only 

 when they are not able ; for when they come 

 at lambs, they show no mercy ; and serpents 

 are their ordinary food. The manner of those 

 birds is to perch themselves, several together, 

 on the old pine and cypress-trees ; where they 

 continue all the morning, for several hours, 

 with their wings unfolded ; nor are they fear- 

 ful of danger, but suffer people to approach 

 them very near, particularly when they are 

 eating. 



The sloth, the filth, and the voraciousness, 

 of these birds, almost exceeds credibility. In 

 the Brazils, where they are found in great 

 abundance, when they light upon a carcass, 

 which they have liberty to tear at their ease, 



they so gorge themselves that they are unable 

 to fly ; but keep hopping along when they are 

 pursued. At all times, they are a bird of 

 slow flight, and unable readily to raise them- 

 selves from the ground ; but when they have 

 over-fed, they are then utterly helpless ; but 

 they soon get rid of their burden ; for they 

 have a method of vomiting up what they have 

 eaten, and then they fly off with greater faci- 

 lity. 



It is pleasant, however, to be a spectator of 

 the hostilities between animals that are thus 

 hateful or noxious. Of all creatures, the two 

 most at enmity is the vulture of Brazil and 

 the crocodile. The female of this terrible am- 

 phibious creature, which in the rivers of that 

 part of the world grows to the size of twenty- 

 seven feet, lays its eggs, to the number of one 

 or two hundred, in the sands, on the side of 

 the river, where they are hatched by the heat 

 of the climate. For this purpose, she takes 

 every precaution to hide from all other ani- 

 mals the place where she deposits her burden : 

 in the mean time a number of vultures, or gali- 

 nassos, as the Spaniards call them, sit silent 

 and unseen in the branches of some neighbour- 

 ing forest, and view the crocodile's operations, 

 with the pleasing expectation of succeeding 

 plunder. They patiently wait till the croco- 

 dile has laid the whole number of her eggs, till 

 she has covered them carefully under the sand, 

 and until she is retired from them to a conve- 

 nient distance. Then, all together encoura- 

 ging each other with cries, they pour down 

 upon the nest, hook up the sand in a moment, 

 lay the eggs bare, and devour the whole 

 brood without remorse. Wretched as is the 

 flesh of these animals, yet men, perhaps when 

 pressed by hunger, have been tempted to taste 

 it. Nothing can be more lean, stringy, nau- 

 seous, and unsavoury. It is in vain that, 

 when killed, the rump has been cut off ; in 

 vain the body has been washed, and spices 

 used to overpower its prevailing odour ; it 

 still smells and tastes of the carrion by which 

 it was nourished, and sends forth a stench that 

 is insupportable. 



These birds, at least those of Europe, usu- 

 ally lay two eggs at a time, and produce but 

 once a year. They make their nests in inac- 

 cessible cliffs, and in places so remote, that it 

 is rare to find them. Those in our part of the 

 world chiefly reside in the places where they 

 breed, and seldom come down into the plains, 

 except when the snow and ice, in the native 

 retreats, has banished all living animals but 

 themselves: they then come from their heights, 

 and brave the perils they must encounter in a 

 more cultivated region. As carrion is not 

 found, at those seasons, in sufficient quantity, 

 or sufficiently remote from man to sustain 

 them, they prey upon rabbits, hares, serpents, 



