UGLIEST BIRD IN THE WORLD 279 



livered by a certain Viceroy of India at a University not 

 a thousand miles from Calcutta. 



The scavenger vulture is found all over India ; when, 

 however, you come to the neighbourhood of Delhi his 

 beak becomes less yellow and he grows larger. Need- 

 less to say that this is quite sufficient provocation for 

 the manufacture of a new species. 



The scavenger vulture of the Punjab is known as 

 Neophron perenopterus. This multiplication of species 

 is doubtless a very fine thing. But it makes things 

 exceedingly unpleasant for the birds that live in the 

 region where the races fuse with one another. These 

 birds do not know what to call themselves : their bill is 

 too yellow to allow their admission into the perenopterus 

 clan, and too dusky for the ginginianus tribe to have 

 anything to say to them. In such a case it would, I 

 think, be as well to round off matters by creating a 

 third species Neophron neither-one-thing-nor-the-other. 



Of the feeding habits of Pharaoh's chicken the less 

 said the better. It eats filth of any and every kind, and 

 is quite content to subsist upon food which the vultures 

 proper reject as unfit for vulturine consumption. Mr. 

 Finn puts the matter in a nutshell when he states that 

 the bird is " appallingly accommodating of stomach." 



Most vultures seek their food by soaring high above 

 the earth, and thus commanding a wide expanse of 

 country. When a vulture espies a carcass it at once 

 wings its way earthward. Its neighbour, who is soaring 

 at a distance of some miles, sees it depart, and follows 

 it. The second bird's neighbour does likewise, so that 

 there are, in quite a short time, half a dozen or more 



