1834.] THE CONDOR. 175 



is eight or ten shillings. One which I saw brought in, had been 

 tied with rope, and was much injured ; yet, the moment the lino 

 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. Eemembering 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 I 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 

 (Cathartes aura) are highly developed ; and on the evening when 

 Mr. Owen's paper was read at the Zoological Society, it was men- 

 tioned 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 



* 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. 



