THE TURKEY BUZZARD. 253 



its back, with its legs up and apart, as if the animal was dead and 

 putrid. I then retired about a few hundred yards, and, in the lapse 

 of some minutes, a vulture, coursing round the field, tolerably high, 

 espied the skin, sailed directly towards it, and alighted within a few 

 yards of it. I ran immediately, covered by a large tree, until within 

 about forty yards, and from that place could spy the bird with ease. 

 He approached the skin, looked at it without apparent suspicion, 

 jumped on it, &c. ; then, approaching the eyes, that were here solid 

 globes of hard dried and painted clay, attacked first one and then 

 the other, with, however, no further advantage than that of disarrang- 

 ing them. This part was abandoned, the bird walked to the other 

 extremity of the pretended animal, and there, with much exertion, 

 tore the stitches apart, until much fodder and dry hay was pulled out, 

 but no flesh could the bird find or smell. He was intent on dis- 

 covering some where none existed, and, after reiterated efforts all 

 useless he took flight, coursed about the field, when, suddenly 

 rounding and falling, I saw him kill a small garter-snake, and swallow 

 it in an instant. The vulture rose again, sailed about, and passed 

 several times quite low over my stuffed deerskin, as if loth to abandon 

 so good-looking a prey." The author continues: "Judge of my 

 feelings when I plainly saw that the vulture, which could not discover, 

 through its extraordinary sense of smell, that no flesh, either fresh or 

 putrid, existed about the skin, could, at a glance, see a snake, scarcely 

 as large as a man's finger, alive, and destitute of odour, hundreds of 

 yards distant." 



In this first experiment we are left in such uncertainty with regard 

 to the actual distance of the vulture from the author at the time the 

 vulture killed the snake, that I cannot, for the life of me, come to 

 any satisfactory conclusion. It appears that there was a tree about 

 forty yards from the stuffed deerskin. Under covert of the tree the 

 author watched the predatory attack of the vulture on the skin. The 

 disappointed bird took flight, and coursed about the field, which the 

 author tells us is large and open. While coursing round this field, 

 the vulture, suddenly rounding and falling, killed a garter-snake 

 scarcely as large as a man's finger. The author tells us he plainly 

 saw that the vulture could see this snake hundreds of yards distant. 

 I am not surprised that the vulture saw the snake hundreds of yards 



