CONDOR VULTURE. 5 



shaped tubercle: the lower part of the neck is 

 surrounded by a collar of milk-white down or fine 

 plumes representing exactly a tippet of white fur. 

 The extent of the bird, from wing's end to wing's 

 end was said to be more than twelve feet when 

 measured immediately after it was shot*. 



This specimen affords an opportunity of cor- 

 recting a very important error in the descriptions 

 of the Condor given by general observers, who 

 seem to have described it from a cursory view, 

 either from the living bird when seated at some 

 distance with its wings closed, or from too inatten- 

 tive a survey of a dead specimen. Such descrip- 

 tions tell us that the back of the bird is white, 

 which on the contrary, is coal-black; an error 

 most evidently owing to having seen the bird with 

 the wings closed over the back, so that the white 

 secondaries covered it from view. This erroneous 

 description is copied by Dr. Gmelin, in his new 

 edition of the Systema Naturas of Linnaeus, from 

 Molina, who has given a similar one himself. 

 Molina's description seems also to have misled 

 Mr. Latham, who in his Index Ornithologicus has 

 described the 'Condor as having the back white 

 instead of black. I must add that in these descrip- 

 tions the tail is expressly said to be small, which 

 on the contrary, is rather large in proportion to 

 the bird. 



Female? This, like the former, was brought from 



* It was indeed said by some who had seen it killed to have 

 measured fourteen feet, but this I always considered as a mistake, 



