AVES 189 



sidered of such value as a scavenger that it has been protected, by 

 some States, by a fine for killing it. Of recent years, however, the 

 opinion is held by many that the buzzards and perhaps crows are far 

 more injurious than beneficial since they apparently are conveyors of 

 the germs of hog cholera and possibly other diseases of domestic animals. 

 It is possible, then, that a bounty rather than a fine should be placed on 

 the head of the turkey buzzard. The way in which the buzzards locate 

 an animal so shortly after its death has always been a mystery, some 

 authors holding the birds are guided by a remarkably keen sense of 

 smell, others that it is an equally remarkable sense of sight. It is 

 usually thought that it is a matter of sight, and that when one bird 

 locates the carcass and begins to investigate in smaller and smaller 

 circles, the other birds, noting these actions, are attracted toward the 

 same locality until often a considerable number will congregate to feed 

 upon the carcass of a comparatively small animal; Chapman says both 

 sight and smell are used. 



In the far South the carrion crows and buzzards often congregate 

 upon the trees under which hunters are skinning the alligators they 

 have killed during the preceding night, and as soon as a carcass is 

 thrown away the birds drop to the ground and begin to tear at the 

 flesh and viscera. The writer once made use of such a flock of birds 

 to " rough up" the skeleton of a 6-foot alligator. After removing the 

 skin and the viscera the body was thrown on the grass just outside 

 of the camp; in a few hours the birds had picked off the meat so nicely 

 that the skeleton had simply to be rubbed over with salt (NaCl) to 

 make it fit to be shipped home as a "rough skeleton" ready for the 

 taxidermist. 



On the Pacific coast the California vulture or " Condor, " Gymno- 

 gyphs calif ornianus, is found in very small numbers. It is a magnificent 

 bird with '.a spread of wings of from 8 to n feet, and is rigidly 

 protected by law. 



The relation of birds to agriculture is an extensive subject in itself 

 and it can be merely touched upon here, along some of its more im- 

 portant lines. 



There are two ways in which birds are of especial benefit to agri- 

 culture: as destroyers of insects and as eaters of weed seeds. The 

 former is universally recognized; the latter is not so generally appre- 

 ciated. A great deal of investigation has been carried on, during recent 



