AVES—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 
iarge 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, cf 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 
