CLASS II. AV£S: ORDER 1. RAPTORES. 



53 



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THE BROWN VULTURE. 



native of Europe, and is found in lofty mountains, especially in the vast forests of Hungary, the 

 Tyrol, and the Pyrenees ; the south of Spain and Italy ; accidentally in Dalmatia ; more fre- 

 quently in Sardinia ; in Sicily ; rarely in Italy and in Germany. Its food consists of dead ani- 

 mals and carrion, but never of living animals, of which it shows fear. It forms the genus Gyps 

 of Savigny. Mr. Gould notices a deviation in this species from the true or more typical vultures, 

 manifested in the partially bare neck, open ears, curved claws, and powerful beak. 



The Sociable Vulture, or Eared Vulture, V. auricularis, the Oricou of Levaillant and 

 the French ; the Ghaip of the Namaqua Hottentots, has the head and greater portion of the 

 neck red and naked, with the exception of a few hardly discernible hairs ; beak horn-colored, 

 tinged with yellow at its base ; iris chestnut. The folds of red naked skin originate behind the 

 ears, surround the upper part of them, and then descend several inches, being irregular in their 

 outline and nearly an inch broad at their widest part. The throat is covered with hairs inclining 

 to black. This gigantic species, a fit machine for assisting in the clearing of the soil of Africa 

 from the putrid bodies of elephants, hippopotami, rhinoceroses and giraffes, haunts the caverns 

 of rocks, and is altogether a mountain bird. There its night is passed, and there among the 

 lofty crags it retires to repose when it has sated its appetite. Levaillant saw large flocks of 

 them perched at sunrise on the precipitous entrances to their abodes, and sometimes the extent 

 of the rocky region was marked by a continued chain of these birds. Their tails are worn down 

 by friction against their craggy haunts and by the soil of the plains, in consequence of the labo- 

 rious efforts which they make to raise themselves into the air ; when once on the wing, however. 



