6804 Birds. 



History in the world, though they seem to us susceptible of great 

 improvements in matter and plan, like every other old or new thing. 

 The persons who assisted Baird, both Government and otherwise, 

 certainly are placed in a more honourable and proper light than in 

 any work of the kind, American or European, which has come under 

 our notice. It is certainly a model to other savans and writers, Ame- 

 rican and European, who have not been too often wont to make 

 acknowledgments to California for what seemed to the uninitiated 

 outsiders as their own original gatherings, their own original thoughts, , 

 abstracted without acknowledgment, and put in so quietly that one I 

 could hardly recognize their own brain-work or handiwork. 



King of the Zopilotes, and Bartrani's Vulture. — Conversing 

 recently on these two rare, curious and costly birds, with a friend 

 who had resided in Florida several years, he says the descrip- 

 tion by Bartram of the king buzzard, as quoted in vol. ix. of Rail. R. 

 Reports, is correct. He has seen them several times around Lake 

 Okinochobee, and other parts of South Florida; also in Texas on the 

 coast, and on the frontiers near Mier ; he has also seen them near 

 Vera Cruz. They are very scary and shy, and very rare to find in 

 Florida now, on account of the Indian wars since 1830, and the firing 

 of ordnance and muskets ; but they used to be very numerous once. 

 Of late years they have flown off to the more unfrequented continental 

 countries of the Gulf of Mexico, not far from the sea; and it is very 

 rare to see more than one or two at a time. He has never noticed 

 the female or seen the eggs. 



This gentleman, after reading Bartram's account, says it is the same 

 bird as the king of the zopilotes, depicted in CuUeu's ' Clavijero,' 

 which he recognised immediately ; and that if there is any difference 

 in feathers, appearance or size, it must be owing to the age or sex of 

 the bird, the season of the year, or changes in its plumage. He has 

 seen the bird also on the west coast of Mexico, and quite numerous 

 around Manzanillo and Colima. At Colima he has had them offered 

 to him for two dollars and a half a piece. 



But this opinion cannot prevail against observations of the future, 

 taken on the spot by scientific ornithologists. At any rate, this 

 gentleman's remarks are highly valuable and suggestive. As he is a 

 medico, as well as a great traveller by sea and land, and knows Cali- 

 fornia from Shasta to San Diego, by land as well as by water, with a 

 ten years' experience, and has made several trips along the Mexican 

 and Central American coasts, and travelled pretty extensively in those 



