The Falcons. 55 



and other diminutive migrants of comparatively feeble wing, 

 cross the seas and visit us annually ; and yet the two vultures 

 which have earned a place in the British list by their rare visits, 

 viz., the great ' Griffon Vulture' (Vultur fulvus), and the 

 ' Egyptian Vulture ' (Neophron percnopterus)* both of which I 

 have seen abounding in North Africa, and not uncommonly in 

 the South of Spain, very seldom diverge from their own districts 

 so far as to touch on these northern regions, though they love to 

 soar and sail in circles for hours at a great height above the 

 earth, and to float on motionless wing without effort. Better 

 perhaps, for them and for us that they keep their distance from 

 our shores ; for them, because, invaluable as they are from their 

 habits in tropical countries, where the whole system of drainage 

 is absolutely unknown, and where they delight to gorge them- 

 selves on putrid substances, they would soon starve in civilized 

 England; for in this highly favoured land, where Urban and 

 Rural Sanitary Authorities, Inspectors of Nuisances, and other 

 such high-sounding titles meet us at every turn, what business 

 would the vultures find to do ? and how much out of their 

 element they would be ! Better, too, for us, and we need not 

 regret their absence, for they are birds of such filthy habits that 

 their presence is certainly not agreeable to the olfactory senses, 

 and their near approach is by no means to be desired. Let none, 

 however, despise these most useful scavengers, which are de- 

 servedly held in high esteem in their native countries, and 

 protected as such by the inhabitants ; for as the storks in Holland 

 and Germany, and the dogs in Constantinople and the East, so in 

 Egypt and South America the vultures, arriving in vast numbers 

 from all parts of the heavens, may be seen clearing away the 

 offal and the garbage to which they are in some mysterious 

 manner attracted, and which would otherwise poison the atmo- 

 sphere. Indeed, but for their invaluable aid, I do not know how 

 * Neophron is derived by the Committee of the British Ornithologists' 

 Union (in the list wh'ich they compiled in 1883, and which I shall hereafter 

 refer to as the B. O. U. list) from vkoq <t>pi}v, ' childish in mind,' so called 

 from the bird's having ' the front of the head naked.' See Eyton's 'Rarer 

 British Birds,' p. 3. And percnopterus, 'dusky winged,' from 



