ZOOLOGY. 395 



across the wings. The head and neck are bare, and red and 

 yellow in color. The bill is yellowish white, and the iris car- 

 mine. Dr. Newberry says : "A portion of every day's ex- 

 perience in our march through the Sacramento Valley, was a 

 pleasure in watching the graceful evolutions of this splendid 

 bird. Its flight is easy and effortless, almost beyond that of 

 any other bird. As I sometimes recall the characteristic 

 scenery of California, those interminable stretches of waving 

 grain, with here and there, between the rounded hills, orchard- 

 like clumps of oak, a scene so solitary and yet so home-like, 

 over these oat-covered plains and slopes, golden yellow in the 

 sunshine, always floats the shadow of the vulture." 



Dr. Heermann, of the United States Pacific Railroad Sur- 

 vey, wrote thus : " Whilst unsuccessfully hunting in the 

 Tejon Valley, we have often passed several hours without a 

 single one of this species being in sight, but on bringing down 

 any large game, ere the body had grown cold, these birds 

 might be seen rising above the horizon and slowly sweeping 

 towards us, intent upon their share of the prey. Nor in the 

 absence of the hunter will his game be exempt from their rav- 

 enous appetite, though it be carefully hidden and covered by 

 shrubbery and heavy branches ; as I have known these marau- 

 ders to drag forth from its concealment and devour a deer 

 within an hour. Any article of clothing thrown over a car- 

 cass will shield it from a vulture, though not from a grizzly 

 bear, who little respects such flimsy protection. My coat, 

 used on one occasion to cover a deer, was found on our return 

 torn by bruin to shreds, and the game destroyed. The Cali- 

 fornian vulture joins to his rapacity an immense muscular 

 power, as a sample of which it will suflice to state that I have 

 known four of them, jointly, to drag off, over a space of two 

 hundred yards, the body of a young grizzly bear weighing up- 

 ward of one hundred pounds." 



The turkey-buzzard, or turkey-vulture, (Cathartes aura) 

 specifically the same with the bird known by that name in 



