THE SOCIABLE VULTURE. 



VULTIR AVRICULARIS. 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 w hich 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- 



