EAPTORES. 



71 



usual stately and composed manner, and I stopped to observe it. 

 Much to my astonishment, it quickened its pace, and made a turn 

 around me, then a second, and a third ; the last time so near that I 

 began to think an attack was seriously meditated. I was in an ex- 

 ceedingly unfavorable condition for so formidable a conflict, being con- 

 siderably fatigued by climbing up the steep ascent, and my right hand 

 partially disabled from an accident, to say nothing of the nature of 

 the ground. Upon its continuing to approach, as it made the third 

 circle around me, I seated myself, and drew my knife, at the moment 

 of doing which, as though it understood my intentions, it suddenly 

 wheeled off in a different direction and quickly disappeared, and I 

 confess that, however humiliating the acknowledgment, I was, at that 

 time, very well satisfied with its determination." 



The condor has been given by the Prince Bonaparte (Continuation 

 of Wilson's American Ornithology, IV, p. 1), and by Mr. Nuttall 

 (Manual of the Ornithology of the United States and of Canada, I, p. 

 35), as a bird of North America, but we suspect upon insufficient 

 evidence. A bill and a single quill-feather were brought by the 

 famous explorers, Lewis and Clark, which were supposed to have 

 belonged to this sjDCcies, but it does not seem improbable that these 

 'remains ought really to have been attributed to the California Vulture 

 [Gathartes calif ornianus) , which is also a large species. No other tra- 

 vellers have met with the condor, either in the districts visited bv 

 Lewis and Clark or elsewhere, in any part of the territory of the 

 United States. 



The best descriptions and histories of this celebrated bird are those 

 by Humboldt, in Zoological Observations, I, p. 26 (Recueil d'Observa- 

 tiones de Zoologie et d'Anatomie comparee, Paris, quarto, 1811), and 

 by Darwin, in the Zoology of the Voyage of the Beagle, Birds, p. 3 

 (London, 1841), and by the same author, in Voyage of a Naturalist, 

 I, p. 234, 238 (American edition, New York, 1846, duodecimo). 



2. Sarcoramphus papa {Linn.). — The King Vulture, 

 Vultur papa, Linn. Syst. Nat. I, p. 122 (1706). 



Buff. PL Enl. 428 ; Vieill. Gal I, Plate III; Spix, Av. Bras. I, 

 Plate I. 



