84 vulturidj;. 



THE GRIFFON VULTURE. 



Vultw fulvus, Briss. 



Has once been obtained in Ireland. 



Late in the autumn of 1843, my friend Mr. Yarrell favoured me 

 with the information that he had received a letter from Admiral 

 Bowles, in which this gentleman mentioned having recently seen 

 at Castle Martyr, the seat of the Earl of Shannon, a living 

 vulture, said to have been captured in the county of Cork. From 

 this nobleman, Mr. R. Ball learned that the bird was purchased 

 by his steward for 2*. 6d. of a peasant, who caught it on the sea- 

 shore in that neighbourhood. Its plumage being in good order, 

 tended to indicate that it had not escaped from captivity. His 

 lordship politely offered the bird for the collection in the Garden 

 of the Zoological Society, Dublin, but it died before arrangements 

 were completed for its transmission. By the direction of Lord 

 Shannon, it was carefully stuffed, and then added to the collection 

 in Trinity College, Dublin. It proved to be the fultur fulvus in 

 adult plumage, as distinguished from V. Kolbii, Daud.* There 

 has been so much confusion about these vultures, that their 

 distribution is differently stated in every work that has come 

 under my notice. M. Scldegel in his Revue Critique des Oiseaux 

 d'Europe, published in 1844, gives at p. 12, as localities for 

 what he terms V. fulvus, Dalmatia and Greece : and for V. fulvus 

 occidentalis, Sardinia and the Pyrenees. 



The griffon vulture has not been met with in England or 

 Scotland. 



Egyptian Vulture (Neophron percnopterus, Linn, [sp.] Temm. 

 vol. iv. p. 587). Two of these birds were seen about the Bristol 

 Channel in October, 1825, and one of them was killed. On the 12th 

 of May, 1841, I met with Egyptian vultures in the neighbourhood of 

 Smyrna, and two days afterwards at the Valley of Sweet Waters, near 

 Constantinople. They were in the beautiful adult plumage in which 



* A fine specimen of V. Kolbii, shot at the Nile by Henry Callwell, Esq., has 

 been presented to the Belfast Museum. 



