CONDOR. 327 



beneath, serrated with spines on the margin. A longitudinal com- 

 pressed caruncle, or firm fleshy crest extends from the top of the head 

 to the front, and to the brown portion of the bill. It is rounded before 

 and behind, a sinus on the upper border, the lower free for a short 

 space at each extremity, papillous, or strongly wrinkled, and, as well as 

 the cere, of a bluish color. The nostrils are oval-linear, and with no 

 hairs surrounding them. The skin of the neck and crop is bare, with 

 the exception of some scattered short and rigid hairs ; it is reddish, and 

 has two short pear-shaped processes depending from it. Two inter- 

 twisted fleshy strings arise from the bill, pass over the auditory region, 

 and descend along the sides of the neck : these fleshy cords acquire by 

 desiccation, in stuffed specimens, the appearance of a series of tubercles 

 or wrinkled protuberances : a double string of a similar substance passes 

 above the eye, which is small, much lengthened, and lateral, being set 

 far back from the bill : the irides are of an olive gray. Their cavernous 

 structure enables the bird to swell out all these appendages at pleasure, 

 like the Turkey : the crest, however, must be excepted, which is very 

 dissimilar to the flaccid, pendulous cone of the Turkey, and incapable 

 of dilatation. The orifice of the ear is very large, subrounded, but hidden 

 under the folds of the temporal membrane. The occiput exhibits a few 

 short brown bristles. Around the lower part of the neck above is a beau- 

 tiful half collar of silky and very soft down as white as snow, which sepa- 

 rates the naked parts from the feathered body. In front this collar is 

 interrupted, and the neck is bare down to the black plumage : this gap 

 in the collar can however only be discovered on close inspection. The 

 whole plumage is of a very deep blue black ; the tips of the secondaries 

 and the greater wing-coverts on the outer web only being of a whitish 

 pearl-gray: the first seven outer quills are wholly black, twenty-seven 

 being white on their outer web : the third quill is the longest. The wings 

 are three feet nine inches long, reaching nearly to the tip of the tail, 

 but not passing beyond, as in the closely related species the Californian 

 Condor. The tail is very slightly rounded at the end, rather short in 

 proportion to the bird, measuring thirteen inches. The feet are bluish : 

 the toes connected at their base by a membrane. 



The female is entirely destitute of crest or other appendages. The 

 skin which covers the head is uniformly blackish, like the plumage, 

 in which there is only a little cinereous on the wings : in this sex the 

 wing-Qoverts, which in the male are white at tip from the middle, are of 

 a blackish gray. This circumstance is very conclusive, inasmuch as the 

 white forms a very conspicuous mark on the wings of the male, which 

 has occasioned it to be said that some Condors had a white back. 



For several months during the early part of their life, the young are 

 covered with very soft whitish down, curled, and resembling that of 

 young owls : this down is so loose as to make the bird appear a large 



