AI2 CONDOR. 
their prey, that they may learn to employ their beak and talons. 
The vultures, whose claws are not fitted for seizing and bear- 
ing off their spoils, disgorge into the mouth of their young 
the contents of their crop, from the{nature of which, this oper- 
ation, so interesting when performed by a dove or a canary, 
becomes in this case one of the most disgusting imaginable. 
According to Belon, the Latin name Vuléwr is but a con- 
traction of volatu tardo: the name Cathartes, imagined by 
Illiger, means in Greek, purger. Condor is a corruption of 
cuntur, the true appellation of our species in the Qquichua 
language, derived, according to Humboldt, from the verb 
cunturt, to smell. 
Although the largest of American vultures, the condor is 
inferior in size to several of those which inhabit the old con- 
tinent, and even to the large golden vulture of Hastern Europe. 
Both sexes are very nearly of equal size; but the superiority, 
if any, is found, as usual, upon the side of the female; so that 
the common statement of writers, that this sex is of less size, 
has no foundation in fact. 
The adult male is always more than three feet long, and 
measures nine feet from tip to tip of the extended wings. 
Some gigantic individuals are met with four feet long and 
twelve in extent. The bill is dark brown colour at the base, 
somewhat of a lemon white at tip. The tongue is entire, 
cartilaginous, membranous, ovate-cuneate, concave beneath, 
serrated with spines on the margin. A longitudinal com- 
pressed caruncle, or firm fleshy crest, extends from, the top 
of the head to the front, and to the brown portion of the bill. 
It is rounded before and behind, a sinus on the upper border, 
the lower free for a short space at each extremity, papillous, 
or strongly wrinkled, and, as well as the cere, of a bluish 
colour. The nostrils are oval-linear, and with no hairs 
surrounding them. The skin of the neck and crop is 
bare, with the exception of some scattered short and rigid 
hairs ; it is reddish, and has two short pear-shaped processes 
depending from it. Two intertwisted fleshy strings arise from 

