320 CONDOR. 



bird, and that the Mastodon is now extinct. So much for human 

 credulity, which is often exercised upon more serious occasions, with 

 equal impudence and much worse results. 



As in so many other instances of power based upon prejudice, or 

 great reputation unjustly usurped, a near and close examination has 

 shown the falsity of these pretensions. The wonderful Condor now 

 proves to be nothing more than a rather large Vulture. The same has 

 happened, as Humboldt observes, with its countrymen, the gigantic 

 Patagonians, who are found at last not to exceed the stature of ordinary 

 men. 



Notwithstanding the faithful accounts of a few of the older authors, 

 the true history of the Condor had remained involved in the obscurity 

 created by mingling it with so many childish tales, when the celebrated 

 Humboldt, studying it living with the sober eye of truth and philosophy, 

 furnished a correct description, a good drawing, and an excellent 

 memoir upon it. Since that time several stuffed as well as living speci- 

 mens have reached the menageries and museums of the United States 

 and Europe, which with the three plates published by Temminck, have 

 tendered it familiar to all. It is but just, however, to mention that 

 Latham had, long before Humboldt, given in his second Supplement a 

 tolerably correct description of both sexes, with a figure of the adult 

 male, and taken also from the identical specimens, now at Vienna, and 

 originally brought to England by Captain Middleton from the straits of 

 Magellan, that furnished the subjects of Temminck's plates. 



The adults of both sexes, and a young female, having been tolerably 

 well represented, it is the young male that we have preferred to figure 

 in this work, in order thus to complete the iconography of so interest- 

 ing a species. And we trust that through the exertions of our artists, 

 our figure, which is reduced three and a half times from nature, will be 

 found for minuteness of accuracy much superior to all, owing to the 

 extraordinary pains taken by Mr. Lawson, who besides being furnished 

 with a correct drawing, made repeated visits to the living bird, carefully 

 verifying its form and dimensions in all their details. 



The genus Vultur of Linn^, now the family Vulturini (or Vulturidce), 

 a family first established by Dumfoil under the appellation of Ptilodires, 

 or Nudicolles, though much less numerous as well as less intricate in the 

 characters of the species than the Falconidce, of which we have treated 

 .under the head of Falco cooperii, has nevertheless much exercised the 

 ingenuity of ornithologists, who nearly all disagree both as to its limits 

 and its subdivisions. With respect to the former, those recognised by 

 us will be clear and well defined, this family being constituted of the two 

 modern genera Vultur and Catharteg, of Illiger, which we adopt with 

 some modifications, as will be seen hereafter. Contrary to the general 

 practice, we discard from it the aberrant genera forming the passage to 



