20 MONK VULTURE, 



furnished towards the lower part with a kind of 

 plumy ruff or collar, owing to a duplicature of 

 the skin in that part, beset on its edges either with 

 long, lanceolate plumes, or merely with a kind of 

 long down, as in the Condor. The present species 

 exhibits more strikingly than most others this 

 particular conformation: the loose skin with its 

 plumy ruff appearing in certain attitudes of the 

 bird not unlike a monk's cowl thrown backward 

 on the shoulders. This bird though it seems to 

 have been known to Aldrovandus, appears to have 

 been but little understood by succeeding ornitho- 

 logists, and, like the Bearded Vulture above de- 

 scribed, has been formed into two or three imagi- 

 nary species by different authors. The description 

 of Aldrovandus, probably from a young or small 

 specimen, is as follows. From the tip of the bill 

 to the end of the tail it was by measure three spans : 

 the bill was long, but for the most part covered 

 with a skin or membrane, so that about an inch 

 only of the tip remained bare ; the hooked end 

 being small and slender: the head was bald or 

 destitute of feathers to the hind part, so that the 

 feathers standing up behind the crown resembled 

 a monk's hood put back and leaning on his neck 

 when he goes with his head uncovered. The 

 colour of almost all the feathers of the whole body 

 was dusky, inclining to dark chesnut, only inter- 

 rupted by a continued series of whitish feathers on 

 the lower part of the neck, making an acute angle, 

 the point running down the middle of the back, 

 and forming as it were the acuminated part of the 



