18 FACULTIES OF BIRDS. 



there was seen high in the zenith a number of minute 

 objects descending in spiral circles, and increasing in 

 visible magnitude at every revolution. These were 

 soon discovered to be a flight of vultures, which must 

 have observed from a height, viewless to the human 

 eye, the dropping of the animal immediately marked 

 out for prey *. 



Dr. James Johnson mentions a fact illustrative of 

 the same view. During the north-east monsoon, 

 when the wind blew steadily in one point for months 

 in succession, he observed a concourse of birds of 

 prey from every point of the horizon hastening to 

 a corpse that was floating down the river Ganges ; 

 and he accounts for their thus congregating, and 

 appearing suddenly from immense distances, to their 

 soaring high in the air for the purpose of looking 

 out for food f 



It is said in St. Matthew, as the received translation 

 gives it, that "where the carcass is, there will the 

 eagles be gathered together J ;" and in Job it is said, 

 " where the slain is, there is she." Now it is well 

 known that the eagle does not feed on carrion, and it 

 has been proved by experiment that it will not touch 

 it unless pressed by hunger . Yet Professor Paxton 

 contends with St. Jerome that the eagle is certainly 

 meant in the text, and quotes after Bochart || the 

 Arabian historian Damir, who asserts that the eagle 

 can discover a carcass at the distance of four hun- 

 dred parasangs, with this singularity that if he find 

 part of it have been previously eaten by the osprey 

 he will not touch the leavings of his inferior ^f. This 

 circumstance, as it appears to us, makes rather 

 against than for Dr. Paxton's opinion, supposing the 

 authority of Damir to be good. In consequence of 



* Travels in Africa. f M ed. Chir. Review, Dec. 1828. 



I Matth. xxiv. 28, and Luke xvii. 37. Selby, Illustr. i. 



|| Hieroz, ii. 175. ([ Illustr. ii. 9. 



