NORTHERN SOCIABLE VULTURE. 
as they do in the Eagle Owl. The under parts, including the under 
tail coverts, very dark, no white underneath. The feathers down the 
front of the breast, are very much longer in this bird than in the 
other. This bird has been eight years in the Gardens, the other only 
about a year." 
I think the time has hardly arrived when we can pronounce these 
birds to be positively distinct species, but .the claim of the northern 
form, V. nubicus, to a place in the European fauna is well established. 
Of the occurrence of the Northern Sociable Vulture in Europe we 
have an instance quoted by M. Jaubert and Barthelemy, in their work 
on the "Ornithology of the South of France," of its capture at Aries, 
and another having nested in Spain, and they also state that there is 
a specimen preserved in the Museum at Marseilles which was killed 
in the Levant. 
Mr. Gurney states there is a specimen, No. 4., in the Norwich Museum, 
which he has the authority of the late Monsieur Jules Verreaux for 
stating was killed in Greece. Temminck also gives Greece as a 
locality, but this is doubted by Count Von der Miihle and Linder- 
mayer. 
The Northern Sociable Vulture has been well described by Von 
Heuglin, in his " Ornithologie Nord Ost Africas," which I will tran- 
scribe : — 
"The Sociable or Eared Vulture is scarce in the most northern part 
of Egypt, tolerably frequent in the middle and northern provinces, 
common in Nubia, in North Kordofan and Senar, Takah, and the whole 
of Abyssinia, where it is found as high as twelve thousand feet above 
the sea. It is not found in the middle and upper regions of the 
White Nile, and is only seen occasionally on the coast of the Red Sea. 
The Eared Vulture is a stationary bird, and, like most of the tribe, it 
lives in companies. It rests at night on rocky mountains, often very 
far from the districts which constitute its hunting quarters during the 
day. In woody districts it will settle in trees which have bare branches 
or tops, allowing it some extent of view around. If not much distur- 
bed, the bird is not shy; indeed, it will often settle in the neighbour- 
hood of villages, about the matted tents of the nomadic tribes, and near 
the encampments of caravans. With quiet and stately flight, the Eared 
Vulture makes wide circles, and often so high in the air that the eye 
can scarcely descry it. When they find a dead animal (which cannot 
escape their powerful organs of sight), they descend in spiral lines on 
to the ground sonic little distance from the carrion. They then spread 
out their wings again, and with outstretched neck, rush, with droll 
jerks and sometimes with a kind of scream, upon their prey. A single 
