74 DIVISION I. VERTEBRAL ANIMALS.—CLASS II. AVES. 
Concepcion, on the 5th of March (corresponding to our September), I saw 
-a youne bird, which, though in size little inferior to an old one, was com- 
pletely covered with down, like that of a gosling, but of a blackish color. 
After the period when the young Condors can fly, and apparently as well as 
the old birds, they yet remain at night on the same ledge, hunting by day 
with their parents. Before, however, the young bird has the ruff turned 
white, it may be often seen hunting by itself.” Mr. Darwin considers it 
probable that the Condor breeds only once in two years. 
The King Vulture (Sarcoramphus papa) is a native of the intertropical 
regions of America, and is seen occasionally in Florida — probably its most 
northern limit. It is not, like the Condor, a mountain bird, but tenants the 
low, humid forests bordering rivers and savannas, where animal life is 
abundant, and where decomposition rapidly succeeds death. It is amidst 
the most luxuriant scenery that this monarch of the vultures reigns, the 
turkey-buzzard and gallinazo being in subjection under him. Waterton, in 
his entertaining work, relates that, while sailing up Essequibo, he observed 
a pair of King Vultures sitting on the naked branch of a tree, with about 
adozen of the common species, waiting to begin the feast upon a goat killed 
by a jaguar, but which he had been foreed to abandon. The pair seemed 
rather to tolerate the presence of the rest, than to associate with them on the 
terms of familiarity. The same traveller, having killed a large serpent, 
caused it to be carried into the forest, as a lure for one of these vultures 
which he wished to obtain. He watched the result. “The foliage,” he 
says, where he laid the snake, “was impervious to the sun’s rays; and had 
any vultures passed over that part of the forest, I think I may say, with 
safety, that they would not have seen the body through the shade. Tor the 
first two days not a yulture made its appearance at the spot, though I could 
see a Vullur aura, gliding on apparently immovable pinions, at a moderate 
height over the tops of the forest trees; but, during the afternoon of the 
sane day, when the carcass of the serpent had got into a state of putrefac- 
tion, more than twenty of the common vultures came and perched upon the 
neighboring trees, and the next morning, a little before six o’clock, I saw a 
magnificent King of the Vultures. There was a stupendous moro tree close 
t=) 
by, whose topmost branches had either been tried by time, or blasted by 
the thunder-storm. Upon this branch I killed the King of the Vultures 
before it had descended to partake of the savory food which had attracted 
it to the place. Soon after this, another King of the Vultures came, and, 
after he had stuffed himself almost to suffocation, the rest pounced down 
upon the remains of the serpent, and staid there till they had devoured the 
last morsel.” 
mp = 4 . . . ry . 
Though this species is mostly seen alone or in pairs, travellers state that, 
