SELBY's BRITISH BIRDS. 93 



loured correctly after nature, by or under the direction of the 

 author himself. As far as I have had an opportunity of 

 examining the engravings, they appear far superior to any 

 thing that has yet been published in this country concerning 

 British Birds. It bids fair not only to equal, if not to ex- 

 ceed, in many particulars, Andrew Wilson's work, but 

 also to supply a desideratum in our ornithological history, 

 which every lover of birds must of necessity highly esteem. 

 My poetical division of the birds, although not scientific, 

 will not be, I flatter myself, without its uses. From the 

 great loco-motive powers of many birds, they belong to 

 almost all regions of the earth; yet, in a general view, the 

 Eagle may be said to be the king of the birds of the tem- 

 perate, as the Vulture, Condur, is of the torrid zones. 

 The Condur prefers putrid to fresh meat; hence the use 

 of such birds in warm climates. As the organ of smell is, 

 in the Vulturid race of birds, strongly developed, Mr. 

 Vigors thinks that this tribe bears, among birds of prey, 

 the same analogical relation to the canine race among the 

 mammalia, as the Falconids exhibit to the Feline tribes.* 

 Pliny has concisely stated the difference in this respect 

 between these two genera of birds. Aquil;e clarius cernunt ; 

 Vultures sagacius ordorantur. The disposition of the 

 Vulture tribe for dead animals was well known to the 

 ancients : 



Exanima obsccenus consumit corpora viiltiir. 



Silius Italicus 



Although I have poetically two divisions of birds, from a 

 desire to maintain, as much as was consistent with the na- 

 ture of my work, a scientific arrangement in the Notes, I 

 have to regret that the description of every bird could not,, 



* Zoological Journal, vol. 2, page 371. 



