CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 239 



tures, with wings that, at full stretch, may 

 spread 9 feet from tip to tip. 



For all its fierce appearance, the condor is by 

 preference a carrion-eater, though it now and 

 again attacks a fawn or young huanaco. It 

 seems to find its meals entirely by sight, and 

 indeed, as Darwin suggested when much 

 moved by the sight of these splendid birds 

 soaring over the mountains, it probably spies 

 the puma killing its victim looking down from 

 some tremendous altitude at which it would 

 itself be quite invisible to those on earth. 



In view of the prominence given in the fore- 

 going pages to so much of the Wilderness 

 as lies under the British flag, the omission of 

 Australia and New Zealand may seem invidious. 

 If, however, we except the deerstalking in the 

 latter country (and bear in mind that the deer 

 are not indigenous, but imported from Europe), 

 we shall find that there is nothing to attract 

 the hunter of big game to the antipodes. The 

 so-called sport of shooting wallabies and 

 kangaroos, in which I took part many years 

 ago, is not much more exciting than rabbit 

 shooting in the fern brakes at home, though 

 hunting these marsupials, of which I had no 

 experience, doubtless gives exhilarating gallops 

 across breakneck country, even if the canons 



