560 FROM NORTH POLE TO EQUATOR. 



his accustomed place, or continues his pathless journeying. Not 

 only does he carefully scan the land lying beneath him, perhaps 

 for many square miles, but he keeps watch on the movements 

 of others of his species, or of any large carrion-eating birds, that 

 he may profit by their discoveries. Thus only can we explain 

 the sudden and simultaneous appearance of several, or even many 

 vultures beside a large carcass, even in a region not usually inhabited 

 by these birds. They are guided in their search for prey, not by 

 their sense of smell, which is dull, but by sight. One flies after 

 another when he sees that he has discovered carrion, and his swift- 

 ness of flight is so great that he can usually be in time to share the 

 feast, if he sees the finder circling above his booty. Certainly he 

 must lose no time, for it is not for nothing that he and his kin are 

 called "geier"; their greed beggars description. Within a few 

 minutes three or. four vultures will stow away the carcass of a sheep 

 or a dog in their crops, leaving only the most trifling remains; the 

 meal-time therefore passes with incredible rapidity, and whoever 

 arrives late on the scene is doomed to disappointment. 



The country round Fruskagora yields a good deal more to the 

 vultures than an occasional feast of carrion, for in the stomachs of 

 those which we shot and dissected we found remains of souslik and 

 large lizards, which are scarcely likely to have been found dead, but 

 were more probably seized and killed. 



On account of the northerly situation of Fruskagora, and the 

 well-ordered state of the surrounding country, which is not very 

 favourable to vultures, the black vultures were still brooding 

 during our visit, though others of the same species, whose haunts 

 were farther south, must undoubtedly have had young birds by that 

 time. The eyries were placed in the tallest trees, and most of them 

 on the uppermost third of the mountain side. Many were quite 

 well known to Count Chotek and his game-keepers, for they had 

 been occupied as a brooding-place by a pair of vultures, possibly the 

 same pair, for at least twenty years, and as they had been added to 

 each year they had assumed very considerable proportions. Others 

 seemed of more recent origin, but all were apparently the work of 

 the vultures themselves. In the oldest and largest of them, a full- 



