34 
THE TURKEY BUZZARD. 
ing a man coming up, in an opposite direction, 
through the open space of a few hundred yards, 
which, to judge by this vague expression, might I 
be a quarter of a miie, more or less. Had the bird 
seen him, there is no doubt but that it would have , 
flown away ; because the author tells us, in the 
beginning of his paper, that when he showed j 
himself to the vultures, they instantly flev^ away j 
frightened." 
In one part of this experiment, at least, our 
author proves, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that 
his vulture was totally deficient in scent ; and he ' 
has the very best of all reasons, — no smell existed \ 
in his deerskin, " No flesh could the bird find, or j 
smell. He was intent on discovering some, where ' 
none existed." Still, methinks, the vulture was, | 
right in ripping up the pretended animal ; and there ' 
was method in his prosecuting his excavation j 
through the regions of dried hay. No lapse of i 
time could have completely subdued the smell | 
which would arise from the ears, the hoofs, the j 
lips, and the very skin itself of the deer. This j 
smell must have been the thing that instigated the 
bird to look narrowly into the skin, and detained 
him so long at the place. I have a better opinion | 
of the vulture's sagacity, than to suppose that he j 
would have spent so much of his precious time 
upon the rudely stufied mockery of an animal, 
unless his nose had given him information that 
some nutriment existed in that which his keen and i 
piercing eye would soon have told him was an 
absolute cheat. 'M 
