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CHAPTER XVII. 

 FURTHER EXPERIENCES WITH EAGLES AND VULTURES. 



II. — Chiefly relating to the Sierra. 



On a hot May morning we lay beneath the shade of 

 pahns and eucalypti in the garden at Jerez, watching the 

 gyrations of Kestrels, Swifts, and Bee-eaters, and lazily 

 listening to the soft l)ird-chorus — an infinite, space-filling 

 refrain from myriad Nightingales, Serins, and Gold- 

 finches — to the spondee of Hoopoe and dactyl of Quail. 

 Presently there appeared, far overhead, some half-dozen 

 Griffon Vultures wheeling in immense circles, the huge 

 birds dwarfed by the altitude to mere specks. Then 

 another stratum, still higher, was detected, and afterwards 

 a keen eye distinguished a third, and then a fourth, bej'ond 

 the average range of human vision. How many more 

 tiers of soaring vultures might yet occupy the regions of 

 unseen space beyond, cannot be told : but the incident 

 serves to illustrate the system on which Nature's great 

 scavengers patrol the land. The lower strata we esti- 

 mated at 800 to 1,000 yards altitude, and these only, it is 

 probable, are on active service, the upper tiers merely 

 standing by, ready to profit by the discoveries of all the 

 working parties that may be in sight beneath them : for 

 at the enormous elevations of the uppermost birds, it is 

 impossible to suppose that even a vulture's eye could 

 detect so small an object as, say, a dead goat on the earth. 



There is something peculiarly impressive in the 

 appearance of these colossal birds and in the automaton- 

 like ease of their flight. Ponderous bodies appear sus- 

 pended in mid-air without visible effort or exertion — the 

 great square wings extended, rigid and motionless, filled 



