Incarnate. Not that he is wicked, but worse 

 than wicked— repulsive. Now the jackal is a 

 mean, sordid scamp, a miserable half-dog beast, 

 a degenerate that has not fallen far, since he was 

 never up very high. The buzzard, on the other 

 hand, was a bird. What he is now is unnamable. 

 He has fallen back below the reptiles, into a 

 harpy with snake's head and bird's body— a vul- 

 ture more horrid than any mythical monster. 



Having once seen a turkey-buzzard feeding, 

 one has no difficulty in accounting for the origin 

 of those "angry creations of the gods " that de- 

 filed the banquets of King Phineus. If there is 

 any holiness of beauty, surely the turkey -buzzard 

 with clipped wing is the most unholy, the most 

 utterly lost soul in the world. 



One bright, warm day in January— a frog- 

 waking day in southern New Jersey— I saw 

 the buzzards in unusual numbers sailing over 

 the pines beyond Cubby Hollow. Hoping for 

 a glimpse of something social in the silent, un- 

 emotional solitaries, I hurried over to the pines, 

 and passing through the wood, found a score of 

 the birds feasting just beyond the fence in an 

 open field. 



[326] 



