Rev. H. B. Tristram on the Ornithology of Palestine. 249 



feast whenever a horse or cow died, as frequently happened near 

 our camp. On a subsequent occasion, on the north side of 

 Hermon, we observed them teaching the Neophrons the same les- 

 son of patience they had learnt here. A long row of Egyptian 

 Vultures were sitting on some rocks, so intently watching a spot 

 in a cornfield that they took no notice of our approach. Creep- 

 ing cautiously near, we watched a score of Griffons busily en- 

 gaged in turning over a dead horse, one side of which they had 

 already reduced to a skeleton. Their united efforts had just 

 effected this, when we showed ourselves, and they quickly retired. 

 The inferior scavengers, who dreaded us much less than them, 

 at once rushed down to the repast, and, utterly regardless of our 

 presence within ten yards of them, began to gorge. We had 

 hardly retired two hundred yards when the Griffons came 

 down with a swoop, and the Neophrons hurriedly resumed 

 their post of observation ; while some Black Kites remained, and 

 continued to filch a few morsels by their superior agility from 

 their lordly superiors. 



Neophron percnopterus (L.). One often regrets that we 

 have but the one generic word ' Vulture ' in our language to 

 comprehend the noble Griffon, and that very useful but very 

 despicable scavenger ' PharaoVs hen,' as Europeans term the 

 ' rakhma.' Really, the Barn-Owl as little suggests the idea of a 

 Peregrine, as does the Neophron that of the Griffon. Yet it is 

 a handsome bird on the wing, and the distribution of the black 

 and white in its plumage has a fine effect as it circles over head, 

 or sweeps past the traveller down some deep ravine. Although 

 often seen under the Griffons, it appears to have about the same 

 sort of acquaintance with it that the crossing-sweeper had with 

 George IV., and most deferentially makes way for the lordly 

 monarch. It never breeds in colonies, and seldom are two nests 

 to be found very near together; but it is the most universally 

 diffused of all the Raptors of Palestine during summer, it being 

 impossible in any part of the country to travel a mile or two 

 without putting up a pair. It has no dislike to the neighbour- 

 hood of man, and fearlessly resorts to the dung-hills of the 

 villages to feed. No tilth, vegetable or animal, seems to come 



