256 WANDERINGS IN SOUTH AMERICA. 



When I had done with the carcass of the Lnrge snake, it 

 was conveyed into the forest, as I expected that it would 

 attract the king of the vultures, as soon as time should 

 have rendered it sufficiently savoury. In a few days it 

 sent forth that odour which a carcass should send forth, 

 and about twenty of the common vultures came and 

 perched on the neighbouring trees ; the king of the 

 vultures came too ; and I observed that none of the 

 common ones seemed inclined to begin breakfast till his 

 majesty had finished. When he had consumed as much 

 snake as nature informed him would do him good, he 

 retired to the top of a high mora-tree, and then all the 

 common vultures fell to, and made a hearty meal. 



The head and neck of the king of the vultures are bare 

 of feathers ; but the beautiful appearance they exhibit 

 fades in death. The throat and the back of the neck are 

 of a fine lemon colour; both sides of the neck, from the 

 ears downwards, of a rich scarlet ; behind the corrugated 

 part there is a white spot. The crown of the head is 

 scarlet ; betwixt the lower mandible and the eye, and close 

 by the ear, there is a part w^hich has a fine silvery blue 

 appearance ; the corrugated part is of a dirty light brown ; 

 behind it, and just above the white spot, a portion of the 

 skin is blue, and the rest scarlet ; the skin which juts out 

 behind the neck, and appears like an oblong caruncle, is 

 blue in part^ and part orange. 



The bill is orange and black, the caruncles on his fore- 

 head orange, and the cere orange ; the orbits scarlet, and 

 the irides white. Below the bare part of the neck there is 

 a cinereous rufP. The bag of the stomach, which is only 

 seen when distended with food, is of a most delicate 

 white, intersected with blue veins, which appear on it just 

 like the blue veins on the arm of a fair-complexioned 

 person. 



