44 
THE VULTURE. 
down upon a good dinner, disappbintment would be 
their lot ; and they would be regaled with nothing 
of a more solid nature than transient puffs of highly 
tainted vapour. But here I will stop : I have been 
too long on carrion, — 
" Neque enim tolerare vaporem 
Ulterius potui." Ovid, Met. ii. 301. 
THE VULTURE'S NOSE. 
The American philosophers have signed a solemn 
certificate that they feel assured that the two species 
of vultures which inhabit the United States " are 
guided to their food altogether through their sense 
of sight, and not that of smell ; " I, on the contrary, 
assert that all vultures can find their food through 
the medium of their olfactory nerves, though it be 
imperceptible to their eye. 
I cannot consent to deprive the vultures of their 
noses merely on the strength of experiments, which, 
from circumstances, may prove fallacious, notwith- 
standing every possible precaution ; and, in the 
cases before us, I find myself constrained to dispute 
the legitimacy of the deductions at which these 
gentlemen calculate they have arrived. The efflu- 
vium from the dead hare and the offal which tbey 
had procured might have been prevented from as- 
cending by the covering of brushwood ; or it might 
have been depressed to the earth by humidity, or 
