214 THE COUNTRY CLERGYMAN. 



opinion, he said, was contrary to that of many natu- 

 ralists, but he formed it for the following reasons. 

 In the West India Islands, vultures are protected 

 as necessary scavengers. After a person has been 

 dead a few hours, numbers of these birds will settle 

 on the roof of the house in which the body is, 

 remaining on it immoveable and with a melancholy 

 silence. This they will do, although the body 

 emits no perceptible effluvia to those in the room 

 with it. A surgeon also, who resided many years 

 in the West Indies, said, that he never performed 

 a dissection in a shut up room without finding a 

 number of vultures on the roof of the house, how- 

 ever fresh the subject might be. Many experi- 

 ments have also been tried to prove that these 

 InnU are directed to their food by scent. In con- 

 firmation of this it may be added, that when mice 

 increased to so great a degree in Dean Forest, that 

 they barked the young trees on some hundreds 

 of acres of plantation, kites, hawks, owls, and other 

 birds of prey increased in proportion, and many of 

 them were of a variety which had never before 

 been seen in the forest. As the ravages of the 

 mice were generally committed amongst the long 

 grass where they could not be readily seen, it is 

 more than probable that the birds of prey were di- 

 rected to the spot by scent alone. Audubon's experi- 

 ment of stuffing the skin of a fawn, and then finding 

 that birds of prey came to it, appears by no means 



