288 THE BOOK OF BIRDS 



seen, busily engaged, in the neighbourhood of towns and 

 cities. Where modern science has not come to teach the 

 inhabitants how to keep their streets clear and clean, the 

 presence of these birds is a boon indeed. They consume 

 the garbage which otherwise would lie for days poisoning 

 the air and perhaps breeding plague. (London was once 

 equally careless in the matter of street refuse, and those 

 swift, sharp-sighted birds, the Kites, were actually en- 

 couraged as scavengers.) 



But the grander members of the tribe prefer the soli- 

 tude to the town. The great open spaces beyond the city 

 walls are to them infinitely to be preferred to the haunts 

 of men. For there is plenty of carrion for those whose 

 eyes are quick to espy and whose wings are ready to sail 

 to the spot. 



These two powers — of flight and of sight — are, indeed, 

 about all that we have to admire in this tribe of birds. 

 As a rule, they lack courage, though they can be made 

 furious, and will, at such times, do audacious things. But 

 they are not so fully armed for fighting as the Eagles, for 

 their talons are short and rather blunt. They are slug- 

 gish, too, and prefer to sit quietly devouring piecemeal a 

 dead horse or ox, than to strike and kill a living animal 

 in the open. 



Their quickness in detecting carrion is extraordinary. 

 This has been noticed for ages past, but, until quite recent 

 times, a good many naturalists believed that it was as 

 much by scent as by sight. Such experiments, however, 

 as Audubon and Darwin made with strong-smelling food, 

 wrapped up and put close to Condors and other birds of 

 prey, have proved that many or most of them have a very 

 weak sense of smell. 



Like the albatross of the Southern Seas, the Vulture 



