1834.] CARRION-VULTURES. 185 



wing-s. Under the same circumstances, it would have been quite 

 impossible to have deceived a dog. The evidence in favour of and 

 ag-ainst the acute smelling powers of carrion- vultures is singu- 

 larly balanced. Professor Owen has demonstrated that the olfac- 

 tory nerves of the turkey-buzzard (Cathartes 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 occa- 

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

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

 gence could hardly have been acquired by sight. On the other 

 hand, besides the experiments of Audubon and that one by my- 

 self, Mr. Bachman has tried in the United States many varied 

 plans, showing that neither the turkey -buzzard (the species dis- 

 sected by Professor Owen) nor the gallinazo find their food by 

 smell. He covered portions of highly offensive ofial with a thin 

 canvass cloth, and strewed pieces of meat on it ; these the carrion- 

 vultures ate up, and then remained quietly standing, with their 

 beaks within the eighth of an inch of the putrid mass, without dis- 

 covering it. A small rent was made in the canvass, and the offal 

 was immediately discovered ; the canvass was replaced by a fresh 

 piece, and meat again put on it, and was again devoured by the 

 vultures without their discoverin"- the hidden mass on which thev 

 were trampling. These facts are attested by the signatures of 

 six gentlemen, besides that of Mr. Bachman.* 



Often when lying down to rest on the open plains, on looking 

 upwards, I have seen carrion-hawks sailing through the air at a 

 great height. Where the country is level I do not believe a 

 space of the heavens, of more than fifteen degrees above the ho- 

 rizon, is coDimonly viewed with any attention by a person either 

 walking or on horseback. If such be the case, and the vulture 

 is on the wino: at a IieiGrht of between three and four thousand 

 feet, before it could come within the range of vision, its distance 

 in a straight line from the beholder's eye, would be rather more 

 than two British miles. Might it not thus readily be over- 

 looked ? When an animal is killed by the sportsman in a lonely 

 valley, may he not all the while be watched from above by the 

 sharp-sighted bird ? And will not the manner of its det^ceut 

 * Loudon's Magazine of Nat. Hist., vol. vii. 



