84 
VULTURIDiE. 
THE GEOTCM VULTUEE. 
Vultur fulvus, Briss. 
Has once been obtained in Ireland. 
Late in the autumn of 1843, my friend Mr. Yarrell favoured me 
with the information that he had received a letter from Admiral 
Bowles, in which this gentleman mentioned having recently seen 
at Castle Martyr, the seat of the Earl of Shannon, a living 
vulture, said to have been captured in the county of Cork. Erom 
this nobleman, Mr. E. Ball learned that the bird was purchased 
by his steward for 2$. §d. of a peasant, who caught it on the sea- 
shore in that neighbourhood. Its plumage being in good order, 
tended to indicate that it had not escaped from captivity. His 
lordship politely offered the bird for the collection in the Garden 
of the Zoological Society, Dublin, but it died before arrangements 
were completed for its transmission. By the direction of Lord 
Shannon, it was carefully stuffed, and then added to the collection 
in Trinity College, Dublin. It proved to be the fultur fulvus in 
adult plumage, as distinguished from V. Kolbii , Daud* There 
has been so much confusion about these vultures, that their 
distribution is differently stated in every work that has come 
under my notice. M. Schlegel in his Eevue Critique des Oiseaux 
d'Europe, published in 1844, gives at p. 12, as localities for 
what he terms V. fulvus , Dalmatia and Greece : and for V. fulvus 
occidentals, Sardinia and the Pyrenees. 
The griffon vulture has not been met with in England or 
Scotland. 
Egyptian Vulture ( Neophron percnopterus , Linn, [sp.] Temm. 
vol. iv. p. 587). Two of these birds were seen about the Bristol 
Channel in October, 1825, and one of them was killed. On the 12th 
of May, 1841, I met with Egyptian vultures in the neighbourhood of 
Smyrna, and two days afterwards at the Valley of Sweet Waters, near 
Constantinople. They were in the beautiful adult plumage in which 
* A fine specimen of V. Kolbii , shot at the Nile by Henry Callwell, Esq., has 
been presented to the Belfast Museum. 
