554 The National Geographic Magazine 



all outside interference, and I have been 

 told by those who have watched for the 

 purpose that they never rise to the top 

 of the tower with any substance what- 

 ever. They are disqualified by the form 

 of their weak, little curved, unretractile 

 talons from seizing or carrying away 

 living prey. 



These birds lay two eggs at a time, and 

 are said to produce but once a year. 

 Like the American eagle, they build 

 their nests in inaccessible rocks and 

 places remote from the hands of man. 



These jackals of the air are large in 

 size and have remarkably keen sight. 

 They have naked heads and necks, a 

 broad, powerful, hooked bill, and strong, 

 thick legs. They are gregarious, slow 

 in flight, gluttonous of habit, and prefer 

 carrion to living prey. 



In view of the fact that the corpses of 

 all Parsees, regardless of the cause of 

 death, even of the most contagious fever, 

 smallpox, Bombay plague, or cholera, 

 are thus exposed in the towers, it is re- 

 markable that these vultures have never 

 been known, so far as investigation can 

 determine, to spread the contagion or 

 suffer from it themselves. When all is 

 over they come to the top of the towers, 

 where they sit for hours without moving. 



There is nothing of a sacred character 

 ascribed to the birds which admirably 

 perform this disgusting though useful 

 work in the economy of nature. The 

 fact is that there is no unpleasant taint 

 of this charnel-house in the grounds 

 about the towers, there being not the 

 faintest odor of death to mingle with the 

 perfume of the flowers blooming in this 

 beautiful garden. 



Europeans may regard the Parsee sys- 

 tem as barbarous and repugnant to civ- 

 ilized ideas. The Parsees are quite as 

 much justified in so regarding our sys- 

 tem of sepulture. The undoubted fact 

 remains that from the sanitary aspect 

 the Parsee system is infinitely the better 

 of the two. True, we do not like to 

 think of the vultures hovering around 

 the funeral procession for the last few 

 miles, or of others awaiting it, perched 

 on, and greedily gazing down into, the 

 tower. Their system is at all events 

 the more perfect solution of the sanitary 

 side of the question, especially in this 

 hot and moist tropical climate. Death 

 is a solemn reminder of the equality of 

 all men before the law of nature, and 

 their mode is an efficient preventive to 

 post-human distinction, vanities and 

 funeral pomp. 



CHINA AND THE UNITED STATES 



By Sir Chentung Liang-Cheng, K. C. M. G. 



Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary from China to 



the United States 



FROM the earliest intercourse of 

 the United States with China, the 

 relations between our two coun- 

 tries have been of the friendliest charac- 

 ter. When the governments of Europe 

 in the past century, singly or in combi- 

 nation, took aggressive action against 

 China, the United States always refrained 



from acting with them or following their 

 example. But especially since the days 

 when your distinguished citizen, Anson 

 Burlingame, after having represented the 

 government of the United States at the 

 court of Peking, served so ably as the am- 

 bassador of the Imperial Chinese govern- 

 ment in making a series of treaties with 



* An address to the Commercial Club of Chicago, November n. 1905. 



