44 THE VULTURE. 



down upon a good dinner, disappointment would be 

 their lot; and they would be regaled with nothing 

 of a more solid nature than transient puffs of highly 

 tainted vapour. But here I will stop : I have been 

 too long on carrion, 



Neque enim tolerare vaporem 



Ulterius potui." Ovid. Met., ii. 301. 



THE VULTURE'S NOSE. 



THE American philosophers have signed a solemn 

 certificate that they feel assured that the two species 

 of vultures which inhabit the United States " are 

 guided to their food altogether through their sense 

 of sight, and not that of smell;" I, on the contrary, 

 assert that all vultures can find their food through 

 the medium of their olfactory nerves, though it 

 be imperceptible to their eye. 



I cannot consent to deprive the vultures of their 

 noses merely on the strength of experiments which, 

 from circumstances, may prove fallacious, notwith- 

 standing every possible precaution ; and, in the 

 cases before us, I find myself constrained to dispute 

 the legitimacy of the deductions at which these 

 gentlemen calculate they have arrived. The efflu- 

 vium from the dead hare and the offal which they 

 had procured, might have been prevented from as- 

 cending by the covering of brushwood; or it might 

 have been depressed to the earth by humidity, or 



