240 THE WORLD'S LUMBER ROOM. 



11 crows " flapped them ; but though the birds sprang up for 

 a moment they were not alarmed, and did not disturb 

 themselves even when the dogs' master advanced near 

 enough to order them home. 



Though always bold, and generally protected, the 

 Gallinazo does not seem to meet with quite such friendly 

 treatment in Villa Nova as elsewhere, perhaps because 

 licence has made it too troublesome. 



It assembles in great numbers in the villages, Mr. 

 Bates tells us, about the end of the wet season, and is 

 then so ravenous with hunger that it is not safe to leave 

 the open kitchen for a moment while the dinner is cooking. 

 Some of the birds are always loitering about, watching their 

 opportunity, and the instant the cook's back is turned, 

 they will march in and lift the lids of the saucepans with 

 their beaks. The boys of the village lie in wait and shoot 

 them with bow and arrow, and the vultures have come 

 to have such a dread of these weapons that a bow sus- 

 pended from the rafters of the kitchen is often enough to 

 keep them off. As the dry season advances, multitudes of 

 them follow the fishermen to the lakes, where they stuff 

 themselves with the offal of the fisheries, and when, towards 

 February, they return to the villages, they are not nearly so 

 ravenous as before their summer trips. 



In South America, when the Gallinazo has begun the 

 feast, the bones are picked clean by two species of Caracara, 

 or Carrancha, which, from their structure, are called eagles, 

 though in habit they resemble the carrion-crow. 



The larger of these two, the Brazilian Caracara swarms 

 in the desert between the Negro and Colorado, where 



