,a 



22 



Remarks in Defence of the Author 



experiments, it being a subject with which even the most 

 casual observer amongst us is well acquainted* The roof 

 of our market house is covered with these birds every 

 morning, waiting for any litde scrap of fresh meat that 

 may be thrown to them by the butchers. At our slaughter- 

 pens, the offal is quickly devoured by our vultures whilst 

 it is yet warm from the recent death of the slaughtered 

 animal. I have seen the Cathartes aura a hundred 

 miles in the interior of this country, where he may be said 

 to be altogether in a state of nature, regaling himself on 

 the entrails of a deer which had been killed not an hour 



before. 



Ward, ( 



I 



%: 



London, and who was In the employ of the Philosophical 

 Society of this city) was in the habit of depositing at the 



foot of my garden in the suburbs of Charleston, the fresh 

 carcasses of the birds he had skinned ; and in the course 

 of half an hour both species of vulture, and particularly 

 the Cathartes aura, came and devoured the whole. Nay, 

 we discovered that vultures fed on the bodies of those of 

 their own species that had been thus exposed. A few 

 days ago, a vulture that had been killed by some boys in 

 the neighborhood, and had fallen near the place where 

 we were performing our experiments, attracted, on the 

 following morning, the sight of a Cathartes aura, who 

 commenced pulling off its feathers and feeding upon it. 

 This brought down two of the black vultures who joined 

 him in the repast. In this instance, the former chased 

 away the two latter to some distance, an unusual occur- 

 rence, as the black vulture is the strongest bird and gen- 

 erally keeps off the other species. We had the dead 

 bird lightly covered with some rice chaff where it still 

 remains undiscovered by the vultures. 



III. Is the vulture attracted to its food by the sense of 

 smell, or of sight ? A number of experiments were tried 



