CONDOR. 417 
stimulus of hunger can bring them to attack living creatures, 
and then their cowardice will not allow them to meddle with 
any but the feeble or diseased which are incapable of defend- 
ing themselves. 'They will also combine together to overpower 
their prey, if they see the least danger of resistance. A single 
cougar, or even a courageous bird, will drive from their prey 
a whole troop of condors, which, however, seldom amounts to 
more than five or six, as they do not collect in such numerous 
bodies as their fellow-vultures. When feeding on a cow, a 
guanaco, or a paco, they first pick out the eyes, then tear away 
and devour the tongue, and next the entrails, at last picking 
the flesh from the bones. Smaller animals they generally 
swallow whole. Guided by their amazingly acute faculty of 
smell, the condor will arrive, performing circular evolutions, 
from the highest regions of the atmosphere upon a carrion, 
and often, trusting to their powers of digestion, they swallow 
bones and flesh together. The Indians, too indolent to keep 
clean their butchering or similar places, and often neglecting 
to bury their dead with sufficient carefulness, have a great 
veneration for this bird and others of its kind, to which they 
trust to rid them of such nuisances, The regard with which 
they are treated makes them so familiar, that Humboldt 
relates his being able to approach within two yards of a troop 
of condors before they retreated, though he had other persons 
in his company. When full-fed the condor will remain 
motionless on a projecting rock, and has then a sinister 
appearance ; if on the ground, however, he allows of a close 
chase before having recourse to his ample wings, hopping 
along before his pursuer. When, on the contrary, he is pressed 
by hunger and light from emptiness, he will soar to extreme 
heights in the atmosphere, especially in clear weather, whence 
he can discover prey at any possible distance. ‘They lay in 
the most inaccessible parts of the Andes, near the limit of 
perpetual snow, on the most broken and terrific precipices, 
where no other living creature can dwell. Nests have been 
found at the extraordinary elevation of fifteen thousand feet. 
VOL. III, 2D 
