A VES— CONDOR. 415 



just grounds of surprise, when we consider how very imperfectly the condor 

 was known to naturalists down to the commencement of the present cen- 

 tury. Twenty years ago, one or two mutilated specimens formed the only 

 memorials of its existence, in the cabinets of Europe ; and all our knowledge 

 of the living bird was derived from the relations of travellers, for the most 

 part but little conversant with natural history, many of whom merely 

 repeated, without examination, such stories as they found current ; while 

 others, less scrupulous or more fanciful, drew on their invention for those 

 additional traits which they considered necessary to render the imaginary 

 likeness perfect. Thus, the condor of the Andes was compared to the fabled 

 roc, of Eastern mythology ; and this monstrous fabrication of ignorant 

 credulity was declared to be fully equalled, if not surpassed, by the stupen- 

 dous native of the western hemisphere. 



But it was reserved for one of the most scientific of modern travellers, 

 the learned Baron Von Humboldt, completely to dispel the mist of prejudice, 

 which had so long enveloped the history of the condor, and to describe that 

 bird such as it really exists ; to reduce its dimensions, its powers, and its 

 propensities, within their just and natural limits, and to exhibit a faithful 

 and highly interesting portrait in the place of an extravagant and grossly 

 exaggerated caricature. 



The condor forms the type of a genus, a second species of which is the 

 king of the vultures, of British writers. They are both peculiar to the New 

 World, but approach, in their most essential characters, very closely to the 

 vultures of the Old Continent, differing from the latter principally in the 

 large fleshy, or rather cartilaginous caruncle, which surmounts their beaks ; 

 in the large size of their oval and longitudinal nostrils, placed almost at 

 the very extremity of the cere ; and in the comparative length of their quill 

 feathers, the third being the longest of the series. The most important 

 of these differences, the size and position of their nostrils, appears to be 

 well calculated to add to the already highly powerful sense of smell possess- 

 ed by the typical vultures, and for which these birds have been almost 

 proverbially celebrated from the earliest ages. There is also a third species, 

 the Californian vulture, rivalling the condor in bulk, and agreeing, in every 

 respect, with the generic characters of the group, except in the existence 

 of the caruncle, of which they are entirely destitute. 



In size the condor is little, if at all, superior to the bearded griffin, 

 the lammergeyer of the Alps, with which Buffon was disposed conjecturally 

 to confound it, but to which it bears at most but a distant relation. The 

 greatest authentic measurement scarcely carries the extent of its wings 

 beyond fourteen feet, and it appears rarely to attain so gigantic a size. 

 M. Humboldt met with none that exceeded nine feet, and was assured by 

 many credible inhabitants of the province of Quito, that they had never 

 shot any that measured more than eleven. The length of a male specimen, 

 somewhat less than nine feet in expanse, was three feet three inches from 



