VULTURE'S TWO ASPECTS 121 



those Waterton, Swainson and Audubon days: that 

 when an animal died or was slain in the wilderness 

 and stripped of its hide by the hunters, the effluvia 

 emanating from it instantly flew abroad all over the 

 land and rose also to a vast height in the sky, the 

 result being that vultures would soon appear as if by 

 a miracle in scores and hundreds where not one had 

 been previously visible. Sight, they held, could not 

 be the cause, seeing that a dead beast in a forest 

 would not be visible to the soaring birds, except per- 

 haps to one or two that happened by a rare chance to 

 be in that part of the sky directly above the spot. 



As in many another controversy of the kind, all 

 that was wanted here was observation of the birds 

 themselves by some field naturalist ; this in due time 

 was provided. 



An interesting bird is this vulture in the two 

 strangely contrasted aspects in which he appears to 

 us: as the loathsome feathered scavenger in the one 

 and the sublime heavenward soarer in the other, he 

 might serve as an emblem of man in his double nature 

 the gross or earthly and the angelic. An ugly and 

 disgusting creature as we are accustomed to see him 

 in repose, gorged with carrion and dead drunk with 

 ptomaines, his bald, warty head drawn down in 

 between his huge projecting shoulders, his naked 

 crop protruding, and his great wings like two frayed 

 and rusty black cloaks thrown loosely round him. 

 Then, when he has slept off the effects of his dis- 

 gusting meal, he shakes himself, and the loose ragged 

 cloaks are transformed to a pair of great outspread 



