Mollusks. 4635 



sometimes lay on the ledges of high rocks, but quite as often on tall 

 trees, in the old nests of hawks and eagles. The plain diggers of 

 Northern Mexico use the quills for putting their gold-dust in. 



Three of these birds will eat a deer, and when they attack a man or 

 animal, in defence, will nick a lump of flesh out in a minute. The 

 barrel of the outer wing-feathers is 4 inches long by -Jths of an inch 

 in diameter : when the bird is standing, the long wing-feathers will 

 overlap those of the tail more than 6 inches. The upper beak is of a 

 horny white, with a thick, sharp, solid, curved-down and pointed end, 

 and overlaps the lower by fths of an inch. The mandibles are fully 

 T%th of an inch thick. The ear is J an inch long, and 1 J inch from the 

 eye, at the termination of the upper jaw bone. 



When flying the white band of the wings and breast does not ex- 

 tend over the breast, but the breast and belly appear as an intermission 

 of black. They float in the air rather than sail, and their motions 

 aloft form the most elegant and graceful feature of the bird's habits. 



On the 13th instant, at one o'clock in the afternoon, some object 

 attracted a flock of these vultures. At first one suddenly appeared, 

 but in the course of fifteen minutes I observed twenty of them, circling 

 at an altitude of some four thousand feet, and immediately over the 

 beach. When in the air they may be distinguished with a spy-glass 

 from the turkey buzzard, by the white band under the wings. They 

 are generally seen on the sea-shore at Monterey, in the latter fall 

 months, in clear weather ; but sometimes they make their appearance 

 in a foggy atmosphere. As they come so they go — a company will be 

 out of sight in fifteen minutes. They appear " to drop from some 

 cavern in the sky," as described of the vulture of South Africa, by Le 

 Vaillant, many years since. 



One of these birds, killed a few days ago in Carmel Bay, near 

 Monterey, a friend informs me, measured (including breast) 13 feet 

 from tip to tip of wing. 



A. S. Taylok. 

 November, 1854. 



Correction of an Error. — I wish to correct an error into which I have unintention- 

 ally fallen in my " List of the Mollusca found in the Neighbourhood of Banbury " 

 (Zool. 4540). The Pisidium cinereum is not found in this neighbourhood, the specimens 

 [thus named] being very good ones of P. pusillum, as I have been kindly informed by 

 Mr. Webster, of Birkenhead. — R. H. Stretch ; Parsons Street, Banbury, February 21, 

 1855. 



