132 TURKEY VULTURE. 
had not the opportunity of comparing living specimens of the 
two species, they at least had preserved subjects in their 
extensive and valuable museums, from which a correct judg- 
ment might have been formed. The figure in the Planches 
Enluminées, though wretchedly drawn and coloured, was evi- 
dently taken from a stuffed specimen of the black vulture. 
Pennant observes, that the turkey vultures “are not found 
in the northern regions of Europe or Asia, at least in those 
latitudes which might give them a pretence of appearing 
there. I cannot find them,” he continues, “in our quarter 
of the globe higher than the Grison Alps,* or Silesia,} or at 
farthest Kalish, in Great Poland.” + 
Kolben, in his account of the Cape of Good Hope, mentions 
a vulture which he represents as very voracious and noxious. 
“T have seen,” says he, “many carcasses of cows, oxen, and 
other tame creatures, which the eagles had slain. I say car- 
casses, but they were rather skeletons, the flesh and entrails 
being all devoured, and nothing remaining but the skin and 
bones. But the skin and bones being in their natural places, 
the flesh being, as it were, scooped out, and the wound by 
which the eagles enter the body being ever in the belly, you 
would not, till you had come up to the skeleton, have had the 
least suspicion that any such matter had happened. The 
Dutch at the Cape frequently call those eagles, on account of 
their tearing out the entrails of beasts, strwnt-vogels—z.e., dung- 
birds. It frequently happens that an ox that is freed from 
the plough, and left to find his way home, lies down to rest 
himself by the way ; and if he does so, it is a great chance 
but the eagles fall upon him and devour him. They attack 
an OX or cow in a body, consisting of an hundred and 
upwards.” § 
Buffon conjectures that this murderous vulture is the tur- 
key buzzard, and concludes his history of the latter with the 
* Willoughby, Ornithology, p. 67. + Schwenckfeldt, Av. Silesia, 375. 
{ Rzaczynski, Hist. Nat. Poland, 298. 
§ Medley’s Kolben, vol. ii. p. 135. 

