﻿BIRDS OF PREY. SECRETARY VULTURE. 285 



short legs, bristled gape, and long pointed wings ; while 

 the singular tuft of stiff feathers surrounding the bill, 

 makes it a perfect representation of Dasycephala, its 

 corresponding type* in the circle of the thrushes (Meru- 

 lidce*). This vulture, in fact, is the most cruel and 

 rapacious of all the European birds of prey ; and all our 

 best ornithologists have placed it close to the eagles. 



(236.) The third and last type of this family appears 

 to us to be the secretary vulture of Africa, forming the 



genus Gypogeranus (fig. 93.). At least we cannot 

 assign it to any other known division of the Raptores, , 

 without separating it much more widely from its con- 

 geners than our present state of knowledge will sanc- 

 tion. It has been thought, indeed, that this remark- 

 able bird represented one of the primary divisions of 

 the whole order ; in which case it would stand between 

 the owls and the dodo : but its similarity to the vul- 

 tures and the falcons, in our opinion, is too great to 

 favour this supposition ; while, on the other hand, it 

 will subsequently appear that the circle of the Falconidce 

 is sufficiently complete to show that it does not enter 

 into that family. We have no other alternative, then, 

 but to place it as the most aberrant — in other words, as 

 the grallatorial type of the vultures ; a station to which 

 * See the demonstration of this circle in Northern Zoology. 



