THE ROMANCE OF NATURAL HISTORY. 



Tschudi, a most careful and reliable authority, 

 and an accomplished zoologist, assigns to this 

 bird in one place an expanse of "from twelve to 

 thirteen feet," while in another he says: "I meas- 

 ured a very large male condor, and the width 

 from the tip of one wing to the tip of the other 

 was fourteen English feet and two inches, an 

 enormous expanse of wing, not equalled by any 

 other bird except the white albatross."* So far 

 from his "trussing a rhinoceros," or even an ox, 

 he cannot, according to Tschudi, raise even a 

 sheep from the ground. "He cannot, when flying, 

 carry a weight exceeding eight or ten pounds." 

 The voracity of the obscene bird is very great. 

 The owner of some captive specimens assured the 

 naturalist that he had given to one, in the course 

 of a single day, by way of experiment, eighteen 

 pounds of meat, consisting of the entrails of oxen; 

 that the bird devoured the whole, and ate his 

 allowance the next day with the usual appetite. 



We have all been accustomed from childhood to 

 regard with awe the enormous serpents of the 

 hot and damp intertropical forests; though the 

 specimens carried about in travelling menageries 

 have but little contributed to nurture the senti- 

 ment. A couple of coils of variegated mosaic, 

 looking like a tesselated pavement, about as thick 

 as a lacquey's calf, wrapped up in the folds of a 

 blanket at the bottom of a deal box, we had 

 difficulty in accepting as the impersonation of the 

 demon which hung from the branches of an Indian 

 tree, and, having pressed the life out of a buffalo 

 in his mighty folds and broken his bones, swal- 

 lowed the body entire, all but the horns. Here 

 again there is incertitude and disappointment; 

 and the colossal dragon, which looms so large in 

 * M Travels in Peru." 

 120 



