568 The Andes and the Amazons. 



and Mr. Smith, who had hunted many years in the valley 

 of Quito, was never able to get sight of an egg. Incuba- 

 tion occupies about seven weeks, ending April or May.* 

 The young are scarcely covered with a dirty-white down, 

 and they are not able to fly till nearly two years. D'Or- 

 bigny says they take the wing in about a month and a 

 half after being hatched ; a manifest error. They are as 

 downy as goslings until they nearly equal in size a full- 

 grown bird. Darwin was told they could not fly for a 

 whole year. The white frill at the base of the neck, and 

 the white feathers in the wings, do not appear until the 

 second plumage, or until after the first general moulting, 

 during which time they lie in the caves, and are fed by 

 their elders for at least six months. Previous to this the 

 frill is of a deep -gray color (Gilliss says "light blue- 

 black "), and the wing-feathers brown. 



The head, neck, and front of the breast are bare, indica- 

 tive of its propensity to feed on carrion. The head is 

 elongated, and much flattened above. The neck is of un- 

 usual size, and in the male the skin lies in folds. The 

 nostrils are oval and longitudinal, but in the male they are 

 not so much exposed as in the other sex, since the carun- 

 cle forms an arch over them. The olfactories, however, 

 seem to be well developed. Yet the Condor, though it 

 has neither the smelling powers of the dog (as proved by 

 Darwin), nor the bright eye of the eagle, somehow distin- 

 guishes a carcass afar ofi^. The color of the eye is vari- 

 ously given: by Latham, as nut-brown ; by Cassell, as pur- 

 ple ; and by Bonaparte, as olive-gray ; but Gurney, in hir 

 Bwptorial Birds in the Norwich Museum, states it cor- 

 rectly as pale-brown in the male, and carbuncle-red in the 

 female — a singular difference between the sexes. In 

 young birds the color is dark-brown, which changes with 



* In Patagonia, according to Darwin, much earlier, or about February. 



