VULTURES. 



125 



that vultures deliver them from putrid infections. I have seen these 

 birds fly down to the entrances of slaughter-houses, in order to feed 

 upon the head and intestines of animals which had been killed there, 

 and which the prevalence of a bad custom allows to be thrown before 

 the door. 



The Chasse-Fiente, also, frequents the sea-shores in great plenty, 

 where the inhabitants deposit their rubbish, or house-dust. It is, also, 

 attracted to these parts by the offal which is thrown overboard from 

 vessels riding- in the roads, as well as by the shell-fish, crabs, and dead 

 fish, which the ocean ejects from its bosom. It is very probably owing 

 to this abundance of food, that the species of Chasse-Fiente, which is 

 much more numerous than that of the oricou, has so extensively mul- 

 tiplied in the colony of the Cape. 



I know from experiments which I have tried, that this bird can 

 exist a long- time without receiving* any food. One day, when a violent 

 south-east wind had caused several of them to fall down into the streets 

 of Cape Town, I took two alive ; and, as these birds are in general 

 excessively fat, in order to reduce them to a state of meagreness, 

 I was desirous of famishing them to death. For this purpose, I ordered 

 them to be put into a large hen-coop without food. At the end of 

 some time, I killed one of them, which was still too fat. After that 

 I suffered the other to fast several days ; but seeing it grow enfeebled, 

 and believing it to be lean enough, I killed it. I was much astonished, 

 nevertheless, to find that it had even too much fat when I prepared it. 



My remarks on the manners of the oricou are equally appropriate to 

 the Chasse-Fiente, which has the same habits. This species, as I 

 have already mentioned, has infinitely more increased than the other, 

 although the females produce an equal number of eggs : those of the 

 Chasse-Fiente are bluish white. These birds being of a more con- 

 spicuous colour than the oricou, are more readily perceived when 

 perched upon the rocks at the entrance of their retreats, and known 

 by their white spots. It is an agreeable sight to behold a troop of these 

 birds quite covering an entire chain of mountains ; the report of a car- 

 bine, loaded with ball, will be sufficient to set them all heavily on the 

 wing, and cause them to wheel round in the air. In deserts, where 

 vultures do not always meet with carrion in plenty, they feed on what- 

 ever they can obtain. I have killed some, which had nothing in their 

 crops but pieces of the bark of trees, or clay, — often even bones, upon 

 which there was no flesh whatever ; and sometimes, also, the crop was 

 filled with the excrements of animals. The savages assured me that 



