298 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



it had assumed adult plumage. Tame, and even affectionate, 

 the bird was one of the choicest rarities in the collection. A 

 photograph of it was published in the Annual Eeport for 1905, 

 showing the Condor standing on a perch with lowered head and 

 expanded wing, apparently inspecting some object in front of it. 

 The characteristic white under wing-coverts are shown in the 

 photograph. This valuable bird was killed by swallowing an 

 indiarubber band given by some crazy visitor. Happily a second 

 specimen had been purchased a few days before, and is now in 

 the collection, protected from the public by two screens of wire- 

 mesh. 



A flock of no less than twenty-six individuals was seen as late 

 as 1894 by Mr. Stephens, and the species is thought to be hold- 

 ing its own in the remoter mountains. It is also protected by 

 law, but its ultimate survival seems to depend very much on 

 chance, and to enforce the law in the inaccessible districts which 

 constitute its last stronghold would be a difficult matter. Now 

 limited to the coast ranges of California, it would be a thousand 

 pities if this fine Condor, as large as the winged giant of the 

 Andes, should share the fate of Steller's Cormorant and the 

 'pigeon hollandais, of the Reunion Starling and the Labrador 

 Duck. These have all utterly vanished, and the monarch of 

 the western sierras — Shaw's "vultur niger, rostro albido " — may 

 be the next to disappear. Res in cardine est. 



