i88 SCENT IN CARRION-HAWKS, [chap. ix. 



moment the line was cut by which its bill was secured, 

 although surrounded by people, it began ravenously to tear 

 a piece of carrion. In a garden at the same place, between 

 twenty and thirty were kept alive. They were fed only once 

 a week, but they appeared in pretty good health.* The 

 Chileno countrymen assert that the condor will live, and 

 retain its vigour, between five and six weeks without eating ; 

 I cannot answer for the truth of this, but it is a cruel 

 experiment, which very likely has been tried. 



When an animal is killed in the country, it is well known 

 that the condors, like other carrion-vultures, soon gain 

 intelligence of it, and congregate in an inexplicable manner. 

 In most cases it must not be overlooked, that the birds 

 have discovered their prey, and have picked the skeleton 

 clean, before the flesh is in the least degree tainted. 

 Remembering the experiments of M. Audubon, on the 

 little smelling powers of carrion-hawks, I tried in the above- 

 mentioned garden the following experiment : the condors 

 were tied, each by a rope, in a long row at the bottom 

 of a wall ; and having folded up a piece of meat in 

 white paper, I walked backwards and forwards, carrying 

 it in my hand at the distance of about three yards from 

 them, but no notice whatever was taken. I then threw it 

 on the ground, within one yard of an old male bird ; he 

 looked at it for a moment with attention, but then regarded 

 it no more. With a stick 1 pushed it closer and closer, until 

 at last he touched it with his beak ; the paper was then 

 instantly torn off" with fury, and at the same moment, every 

 bird in the long row began struggling and flapping its 

 wings. Under the same circumstances, it would have 

 been quite impossible to have deceived a dog. The evidence 

 in favour of and against the acute smelling powers of 

 carrion-vultures is singularly balanced. Professor Owen 

 has demonstrated that the olfactory nerves of the turkey- 

 buzzard {Caihartes aura) are highly developed ; and on the 

 evening when Mr. Owen's paper was read at the Zoological 

 Society, it was mentioned by a gentleman that he had seen 

 the carrion-hawks in the West Indies on two occasions 

 collect on the roof of a house, when a corpse had become 

 offensive from not having been buried : in this case, the 

 intelligence could hardly have been acquired by sight. 



* I noticed that several hours before any one of the condors died, all the lice 

 with which it was infested, crawled to the outside feathers. I was assured that 

 this always happened. 



