36 
THE TURKEY BUZZARD. 
devour the hams of swine, and riot on pig's liver, 
in such amazing secrecy and silence as not to be 
observed in the act by the lynx-eyed vultures 
above ? Were there no squabbles amongst the dogs 
for possession of the pig's cheeks ? no snarling for 
the flitch ? no pulling the body this way, or that 
way ? no displacing the materials with which the 
negroes had covered the hog? In a word, was 
there no movement on the part of the dogs, by 
which the passing vultures might receive a hint 
that there was something in the ravine below " cal- j 
culated to glut their voracious appetite?" Fear, |j 
certainly, could not have kept them away ; because j 
the author tells us, in another part of his account, I 
that he has seen vultures feeding at one extremity ; 
of a carcass, and dogs at another. 1 
This second experiment, like the story of the I 
bear and fiddle," was broken off in the middle. | 
The author tried to go near the carcass, but the ' 
smell was so insufferable that he abandoned it \ 
when he had got within thirty yards of it. He ! 
tells us, the remains were entirely destroyed, at ; 
last, through natural decay. How did he learn |i 
this ? At the time that he abandoned the carcass ! 
to its fate, the insufferable smell clearly proved that 
there was plenty of carrion still on the bones ; but, 
as the author s own olfactory nerves prevented him 
from watching it any longer, I will take upon myself 
to make up the hiatus valde deflendus^ which his 
sudden retreat occasioned, by a conjecture of my 
own ; namely, that the dogs and vultures, like the 
devil and the king, in " Sir Balaam," divided the 
