308 WILD SPAIN. 



quiring a mountain region exclusively their own, and 

 shunning the near propinquity^ of vultures and other large 

 raptores. It is no doubt this trait of its character that 

 explains its comparative absence from our "home" moun- 

 tains round Ronda, and the failure of our search for it in 

 that district ; for the ramification of mountain-ranges 

 which occupies that southernmost apex of Europe swarms 

 with vultures, which crowd every crag and precipice in 

 numbers quite unknown elsewhere. Such conditions are 

 distasteful to the solitude-loving Lammergeyer. 



Yet, while shunned as near neighbours, it appears certain 

 that the vultures perform services of value to their nobler 

 congener. Their office consists in stripping the skeleton 

 of flesh, and leaving prepared for the " quebranta-huesos " 

 (bone-smasher) his ynnch -preferred hotine-bouche of. marrow- 

 bones. Thus, while the respective haunts of the two 

 species remain distinct, their hunting-areas must coincide. 



The Lammerge3'er disdains carrion ; is never seen at 

 those seething vulture-banquets which form so character- 

 istic a spectacle in rural Spain ; but he loves the bones, and 

 his habit of carrying huge tibia and femora into the upper 

 air, thence dropping them upon rocks, has been known 

 since the days of ^Eschylus. Hence the fouler feeders are 

 useful to him ; he requires their assistance, but demands 

 that they keep a respectful distance. His attitude towards 

 the vultures may be compared with that of certain high- 

 souled anthropoids of human affinity, who utilize their 

 humbler neighbours and cut them dead next day ! 



Thus it happens that while in a range of sierra inhabited 

 by Griffons, the Lammergeyer will not be found, yet a 

 pair of the latter usually have their eyrie at no great 

 distance from the vulture-colony.* 



During our ibex-shooting campaigns among the Mediter- 

 ranean sierras, we frequently fell in with this species. 



* Onr own experience on this point would not enable us to assert 

 this fact so positively — indeed we have observed instances in which 

 the reverse case appeared to obtain ; but the circumstance has been 

 stated to us by an ornithologist whose authority stands beyond question 

 or doubt. 



