CONDOR. 403 
or great reputation unjustly usurped, a near and close exami- 
nation has shown the falsity of these pretensions. The won- 
derful condor now proves to be nothing more than a rather 
large vulture. The same has happened, as Humboldt observes, 
with its countrymen, the gigantic Patagonians, who are found 
at last not to exceed the stature of ordinary men. 
Notwithstanding the faithful accounts of a few of the older 
authors, the true history of the condor had remained involved 
in the obscurity created by mingling it with so many childish 
tales, when the celebrated Humboldt, studying it living with 
the sober eye of truth and philosophy, furnished a correct de- 
scription, a good drawing, and an excellent memoir upon it. 
Since that time several stuffed as well as living specimens 
have reached the menageries and museums of the United 
States and Europe, which, with the three plates published by 
Temminck, have rendered it familiar to all. It is but just, 
however, to mention that Latham had, long before Humboldt, 
given in his second Supplement a tolerably correct description 
of both sexes, with a figure of the adult male, and taken also 
from the identical specimens, now at Vienna, and originally 
brought to England by Captain Middleton from the Straits of 
Magellan, that furnished the subjects of 'Temminck’s plates. 
The adults of both sexes, and a young female, having been 
tolerably well represented, it is the young male that we have 
preferred to figure in this work, in order thus to complete the 
iconography of so interesting a species. And we trust that, 
through the exertions of our artists, our figure, which is 
reduced three and a half times from nature, will be found for 
minuteness of accuracy much superior to all, owing to the 
extraordinary pains taken by Mr Lawson, who, besides being 
furnished with a correct drawing, made repeated visits to the 
living bird, carefully verifying its form and dimensions in all 
their details. 
The genus Vuléur of Linné, now the family Vulturine (or 
Vulturide), a family first established by Duméril under the 
appellation of Pulodéres, or Nudicolles, though much less 
