neighbour's movements, and follows his course ; a third still further 

 removed, follows the flight of the second ; he is traced by another, 

 and so a perpetual succession is kept up as long as a morsel of 

 flesh remains over which to consort. I can conceiye no other way 

 of accounting for the numbers of vultures which in the course of a 

 few hours will gather over a carcase, when previously the horizon 

 might have been scanned in vnin for more than one, or at the most 

 two in sight." A specimen of the Griffon vulture was caught near 

 Cork in 1843 by a boy, and two specimens of Egyptian vulture have 

 been shot in the British Isles, these therefore head the list of 

 British birds. Canon Tristram says again of the Griffon vultures : 

 " They were able to fast for days, but whenever such an oppor- 

 tunity as a camel's carcase presented itself they would be revenged 

 on their fast. I have seen our pet Musha Pasha attack a dead 

 eamel, and, as his crop became distended, sink upon his breast 

 unable to stand, till at length, even this position being too much 

 for him, he lay on his side still eatiag, until, overcome and helpless, 

 he fell asleep." That I should call gluttony. As I said in the 

 beginning of my paper, moralists must be careful in selecting their 

 examples. The strength of this same vulture's stomach was 

 equal to its capacity, for on one occasion it devoured a half pound 

 pot of arsenical soap, and only suffered sickness in consequence. 

 There is a bird of the hawk family, found in Africa, called the 

 Secretary bird, which is very skilful in d^ stroying venomous serpents. 

 It is for this reason protected by various Governments in South 

 Africa. It does not always win the fight. One was observed to 

 suddenly leave off fighting, and run to a pool of water, where it fell 

 down dead. It fights by spreading its wings out in front as a 

 shield to guard its body, and then suddenly assails the snake by a 

 tremendous blow with its feet. If the snake bites a feather, the 

 bird immediately pulls it out ; but in the fatal mstance mentioned, 

 the snake had drawn blood from the point of the wing. This is a 

 handsome bird, standing more than four feet high, with an elegant 

 crest of plumes on its head. 



In the Museum you can see a pair of sparrow hawks. These 

 birds make smaller birds their prey much more frequentlj than 

 the kestrel, of which Mr. Ullyett has kindly lent me this specimen 

 to-night. I am not quite sure that I have seen sparrow hawks 

 about here lately, but the kestrels afforded me a lot of amusement 

 this pa^t summer. I was on the edge of the chalk cliffs overlooking 

 the Warren, whon I heard a peculiar whining cry, like that of a 

 small baby. I looked across to a very steep, prominent, chalky 

 height, and saw three or four kestrels flying about in a very excited 

 way, and screaming. In a very short time I saw a very small 

 j.abbit run rather slowly up an almost perpendicular piece of the 



