564 The Andes and the Amazons. 



CHAPTER XLII. 



On the Condors and Humming-birds of the Equatorial Andes.* 



The Condor has been singularly unfortunate in the 

 hands of the curious and scientific. Fifty years have 

 elapsed since the first specimen reached Europe ; yet to- 

 day the exaggerated stories of its size and strength are re- 

 peated in many of our text-books, and the very latest orni- 

 thological w^ork leaves us in doubt as to its relation to the 

 other vultures. No one credits the assertion of the old 

 geographer, Marco Paolo, that the Condor can lift an ele- 

 phant from the grpund high enough to kill it by the fall ; 

 nor the story of a traveler, so late as 1830, vpho declared 

 that a Condor of moderate size, just killed, was lying be- 

 fore him, a single quill-feather of which was twenty good 

 paces long ! Yet the statement continues to be published 

 that the ordinary expanse of a full-grown specimen is from 

 twelve to twenty feet; whereas it is very doubtful if it 

 ever exceeds, or even equals, twelve feet. A full-grown 

 male, from the most celebrated locality on the Andes, now 

 in Vassar College, has a stretch of nine feet ; Humboldt 

 never found one to measure over nine feet ; and the largest 

 specimen seen by Darwin was eight and a half feet from 

 tip to tip. An old male in the Zoological Gardens of Lon- 

 don measures eleven feet. Yon Tschudi says he found 

 one with a spread of fourteen feet two inches ; but he in- 

 validates his testimony by the subsequent statement that the 

 full-grown Condor measures from twelve to thirteen feet. 



* For the author's contributions to the natural history of the valley of 

 Quito, see American Naturalist, vol. v. 



