FROM SPAIN. 479 



heedless of all danger. None of the other European Vultures 

 can be so easily lured to a carcass ; and in Spain, whenever I 

 wanted to shoot vultures at a bait, the Egyptian was always 

 the first to appear, often sailing round us low down and 

 examining the carrion, while we were still employed either 

 in laying it out or in giving the finishing touches to our 

 ambush. On no occasion, however, did I notice more than 

 five or six of them at a vultures' banquet, for they never 

 occur in such numbers as the Griffons ; but, on the other 

 hand, a few never failed to come. 



I believe that this bird does not daily undertake such long 

 excursions in search of plunder as its larger relatives, and 

 that it has but a limited beat; so that when a carcass is 

 exposed the Egyptian Vultures belonging to the place imme- 

 diately appear; while in many promising localities, which 

 are generally tenanted by the large vultures, there are days 

 when one does not find a single bird at home, and only after 

 hours of waiting are they seen returning from a distant 

 feast. In most parts of Spain the small, and therefore more 

 easily satisfied, vulture finds sufficient nourishment every- 

 where; for, quite independently of the fact that abundant food 

 is almost daily afforded them by the dead domestic animals 

 in the neighbourhood of human settlements, and especially 

 by the bodies of the murdered horses that are thrown outside 

 the gates of the towns after bull-fights, the people of Spain 

 take absolute pains to poison the air with smaller offal and 

 dirt of all kinds; so that, owing to this total absence of clean- 

 liness, it is easy for the vultures to carry on a sort of scaven- 

 gering of the village streets every morning. I found such 

 evident traces of this unpleasant industry on the beak and 

 feet of an Egyptian Vulture, that from that time I never in- 

 terfered with them again, though I could have shot plenty of 

 them; but after killing and measuring three specimens, I 



