62 FACULTIES OF BIRDS. 



view, Houbigant reads "Aiiah who attacked the 

 Emims in the wilderness." We pretend not to 

 decide which is the most correct, though Bryant's 

 rendering seems the most rational. 



These two instances of the camel and the ass, 

 however, seem to be solitary, for we have no good 

 evidence to prove that other animals can discover 

 very distant objects by the smell, though the fact has 

 been commonly asserted of vultures, and also, as we 

 have already remarked, of the goose. In a case of 

 this sort observation is always better than the most 

 ingenious and plausible theoretical reasoning ; and 

 fortunately we possess, with respect to the vulture and 

 some other birds, the remarks of Dr. James Johnson, 

 which we have already partially referred to, but shall 

 now give entire. " It has always," says the Doctor, 

 " appeared to us most extraordinary, indeed unac- 

 countable, that birds of prey could scent carcasses at 

 such a distance as they are said to do. We were led 

 to scepticism on this subject some twenty years ago, 

 while observing the concourse of birds of prey from 

 every point of the horizon to a corpse floating down 

 the river Ganges, and that during the north -east 

 monsoon when the wind blew steadily from one point 

 of the compass for months in succession. It was 

 extremely difficult to imagine that the effluvia from a 

 putrifyirig body in the water could emanate in direct 

 opposition to the current of air and impinge on the 

 olfactories of birds many miles distant. Such, how- 

 ever, were the dicta of natural history, and we could 

 only submit to the general opinion. We have no 

 doubt, now that we know the general opinion to be 

 something wrong, that it was by means of the optic 

 rather than the olfactory nerve, that these birds found 

 out their quarry. 



" The toucan ranks next to the vulture in discern- 

 ing, whether by smell or by sight, the carrion on 



