THE VOYAGE OF THE BEAGLE 199 



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 circum- 

 stances, 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 devel- 

 oped; and on the evening when Mr. Owen's paper was read 

 at the Zoological Society, it was mentioned 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 this 

 case, the intelligence could hardly have been acquired by 

 sight. On the other hand, besides the experiments of Audu- 

 bon and that one by myself, Mr. Bachman has tried in the 

 United States many varied plans, showing that neither the 

 turkey-buzzard (the species dissected by Professor Owen) 

 nor the gallinazo find their food by smell. He covered por- 

 tions of highly-offensive offal with a thin canvas cloth, and 

 strewed pieces of meat on it: these the carrion-vultures ate 

 up, and then remained quietly standing, with their beaks 

 within the eighth of an inch of the putrid mass, without 

 discovering it. A small rent was made in the canvas, and 

 the offal was immediately discovered; the canvas was re- 

 placed by a fresh piece, and meat again put on it, and was 

 again devoured by the vultures without their discovering 

 the hidden mass on which they were trampling. These facts 

 are attested by the signatures of six gentlemen, besides that 

 of Mr. Bachman. 3 



s London's Magazine of Nat. Hist., vol. vii. 



