180 ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS. 



equal to the second and third, which are the longest ; 

 and the tail-feathers twelve in number. 



In its attitudes this bird resembles the Eagles more 

 than the Vultures, its confident and upright bearing 

 strongly contrasting with the crouching and suspicious 

 postures of the latter. Like these, however, it gene- 

 rally retains its wings in a state of half-expansion when 

 at rest, and its neck more or less retracted within its 

 shoulders. Its food, as we shall presently see, is more 

 frequently sought in a living prey than on a putrefying 

 carcase ; and for this reason it is not often found, like 

 the Vultures, assembling in considerable troops. The 

 increased curvature of its talons also contributes to the 

 same object, by enabling it to carry off its prey, whether 

 living or dead. A careful comparison of their charac- 

 ters, or what is far better, of the animals themselves, as 

 they exist side by side in the Menagerie, will show how 

 nearly this bird holds the middle station between the 

 two large groups to which it is almost equally related. 



Several nominal species were created by the natu- 

 ralists of the close of the last century, which appear 

 now, by common consent, to have been merged into 

 one, the Bearded Vulture of ornithologists, or Laemmer- 

 geyer of the Swiss and German Alps. Its range extends 

 to most of the principal mountain-chains of the Old 

 Continent, as it is found, with more or less frequency, 

 but never in great abundance, in the Pyrenees, the Alps 

 from Piedmont to Dalmatia, the Mountains of Ghilan 

 and Siberia, and those of Egypt and Abyssinia ; occu- 

 pying every where the loftiest and most inaccessible 

 cliffs, and frequently committing dreadful ravages in 

 the neighbouring plains. In size it is the largest of 

 European Birds of Prey, measuring when fully grown 

 upwards of four feet from beak to tail, and in the ex- 

 panse of its wings no less than nine or ten. M. Fortis 



