12 
POPULAR HISTORY OF BIRDS. 
is a very excellent figure of ^^Pharaoh^s vulture^^ {Neophron 
percnopterus) , a common species in Egypt^ Syria^ and As- 
syria^ stooping over a fallen man_, and engaged in pulling at 
his entrails; its attitude and whole manner show that the 
artist had closely observed nature. True to the carcase- 
loving propensities of the race in the East^ we find from the 
pages of Alexander Wilson^ the American ornithologist^ 
Charles^^Waterton^ the pleasant wanderer in Demerara, and 
Charles Darwin, the no less delightful recorder of his travel- 
ling observations, that the vultures of the New World have 
the same habit. Darwin records that, when lying in medita- 
tive repose on the Pampas, pretending to sleep, he has often 
seen the Catliartes, or black vulture of the country, hovering 
near him in flocks. Cowardly as these creatures are, they 
yet occasionally venture to attack dying animals too far gone 
to be able to resist them. 
The presence of vultures and other carrion-feeding birds 
and creatures in tropical climates, is a great boon of the 
Almighty, for by their almost immediate presence, and 
generally in very considerable numbers, they take away what, 
if left to putrefy, might often produce a plague ; and even 
what they leave, being broken up and dispersed, soon dries 
up and becomes innocuous. In some countries, for instance 
