Birds. 1809 



where it was. This led the neighbours to apprehend that the poor man lay dead in 

 his cottage, as no one had seen him for the two days last past. His door was broken 

 open ; he was found in a state of helpless feebleness ; but the room was most insuffer- 

 ably offensive from something putrefying, which could not immediately be found ; for 

 the fever having deprived the German of his wits, he had no recollection of his un- 

 cooked mess of meat and herbs. No one imagining that the kitchen pot could con- 

 tain anything offensive, search was made everywhere but in the right place. At last, 

 the pot-lid was lifted, and the cause of the insupportable stench discovered in the cor- 

 rupted soup-meat. 



" Here we have the sense of smelling directing the vultures, without any assist- 

 ance from the sense of sight, and discovering unerringly the locality of the putrid 

 animal matter, when even the neighbours were at fault in their patient search. 



" Some few days succeeding this occurrence, after a night and morning of heavy 

 rain, in which our streets had been inundated to the depth of, a foot, and flood after 

 flood had been sweeping to the river the drainage of the whole town, a piece of recent 

 offal had been brought down from some of the yards where an animal had been 

 slaughtered, and lodged in the street. A vulture, beating about in search of food, 

 dashed in a slanting direction from a considerable height, and, just resting, without 

 closing his wings, snatched up the fresh piece of flesh and carried it off. 



" Here was the sense of sight unassisted by that of smelling, for the meat was too 

 recent to communicate any taint to the morning air, and the vulture stooped to it from 

 a very far distance. 



" On another occasion, very near to the time when these facts attracted my notice, 

 a dead rat had been thrown out, early in the morning, into the street, having been 

 caught in the previous night. Two vultures sailing over head in quest of a morning 

 meal descended at the same time, stooping to the dead rat, the one from the south 

 the other from the north, and both seized the object of attraction at the same 

 moment. 



" Here again was the vision, unaided by the sensitiveness of the nostrils, direct- 

 ing two birds, with the same appetite, at the same moment, to the same object. 



" For the next example I am indebted to the records of a police court. A clerk in 

 the engineer department at Up-park Camp, brought before the magistrates of St. 

 Andrew's, on the 20th of January, 1840, a man who had been beset in the night by the 

 dogs of the barracks. The poultry-yard had been repeatedly robbed ; and this person 

 was supposed to have been prowling after the roost-fowls at the time the dogs rose 

 upon him. This case had been heard, and the man committed to the house of correc- 

 tion, when a complaint was presented against another man, whom Major G., also of 

 the camp, had detected under similar circumstances, and lodged in the guard-house. 



"Two days after his detection, the Major observed some carrion vultures hovering 

 about a spot in the fields, and on sending to see what was the matter, a Kilmarnock 

 cap, containing a dead fowl and some eggs, tied up in a pair of old trowsers, was 

 found very near to the spot where the prisoner was caught. This discovery, by the aid 

 of the vultures, confirming the suspicion against the prisoner, ne was condemned. 



" The last instance that I shall relate is one in which the senses of hearing, see- 

 ing, and smelling were all exercised, but not under the influence of the usual appetite 

 for carrion food, but where the object was a living, though wounded animal. 



" A person in the neighbourhood of the town, having his pastures much trespassed 

 on by vagrant hogs, resorted to his gun to rid himself of the annoyance. A pig, 



