THE SOCIABLE VULTURE. 



VVLTVR AURICVLARIS. DauD. 



We have already intimated our opinion that the present 

 bird will form the type of a new genus. Its characters 

 are very remarkable. In the breadth and flatness of 

 its head, and the depression of its eyes beneath the 

 level of the general surface, it bears a distant resem- 

 blance to the Eagles ; but the absolute nakedness of 

 its head and of the greater part of its neck establishes 

 its close affinity with the American group, of which the 

 Condor and King of the Vultures are the well known 

 types. It differs, however, from these birds most essen- 

 tially by the absence of the caruncle which in them 

 surmounts the fore part of the head and base of the 

 beak, and by the substitution of a lateral folding of the 

 skin into a kind of membranous expansion, partly enve- 



