THE TURKEY BUZZARD. 



31 



position of his own person, with regard to the wind. 

 This neglect renders his experiment unsatisfactory 

 If, on his drawing near to the birds, no particular 

 effluvium or strong smell proceeded from his person^ 

 it is not to be expected that they could smell him. 

 De nihilo nihilum^ in nihilum nil posse reverti, as the 

 old saying is. If, again, he had a smell about him, 

 and he happened to be to leeward as he approached 

 the vultures, their olfactory nerves could not pos- 

 sibly have been roused to action by it, although he 

 had been Gorgonius himself ( Gorgonius hircum)^ 

 for every particle of smell from his person would 

 have been carried down the gale, in a contrary 

 direction to the birds. 



I will now proceed to examine the author s first 

 experiment. I procured," says he, " a skin of 

 our common deer, entire to the hoofs, and stuffed it 

 carefully with dried grass until filled, rather above 

 the natural size, — suffered the whole to become 

 perfectly dry, and hard as leather, — took it to the 

 middle of a large open field, laid it down on its back, 

 with its legs up and apart, as if the animal was dead 

 and putrid. I then retired about a few hundred 

 yards ; and in the lapse of some minutes a vulture, 

 coursing round the field, tolerably high, espied the 

 skin, sailed directly towards it, and alighted within 

 a few yards of it. I ran immediately, covered by a 

 large tree, until within about forty yards ; and from 

 that place could spy the bird with ease. He ap- 

 proached the skin, looked at it without apparent 

 suspicion, jumped on it, &c. — then, approaching 

 the eyes, that were here solid globes of hard dried 



