SOCIABLE VULTURE. D 



waits respectfully till lie has finished his repast; when 

 he has gone they clear the bones of what the mammal 

 had disdained to touch, Le Vaillant saw large flocks 

 of them perched at sunrise on the precipitous entrances 

 to their abodes, and sometimes the rocky region was 

 marked by a continuous chain of these birds. Their 

 tails are worn down by friction against their craggy 

 haunts, and by the soil of the plains, in consequence 

 of the laborious efforts which they make to raise them- 

 selves into the air; when once on the wing, however, 

 their flight is grand and powerful. 



The nest, which is very large, and formed of boughs, 

 is made among the most inaccessible rocks. It is rarely 

 approachable by man, and when it is reached the abode 

 is sickening to the sight and smell. It lays two, rarely 

 three, eggs. M. Le Vaillant did not hesitate to eat 

 them, a part of his zoological performance I by no 

 means envy. 



I take the following description from M. Degland's 

 admirable "Catalogue analytique et raisonne des Oiseaux 

 observes en Europe," a work to which I shall be much 

 indebted in the following pages. 



Adult male and female; head covered with a thinly 

 scattered blackish brown down; the greater part of the 

 neck naked, and furnished upon the sides with longi- 

 tudinal folds and reticulations, which mount upwards 

 towards the orifice of the ear, below and behind, to 

 a kind of half collar or ruff, composed of rather short, 

 very stff, broad and rounded feathers; half of the 

 head and neck flesh-coloured, more or less inclined to 

 a violet shade; region of the crop covered with a 

 smooth, close, and silky down; the rest of the body- 

 dark brown or blackish, darker above than below 

 with a white shade upon the back; feathers of the 



