THE OLFACTORY NERVES. 
149 
directly proceeded to attack it; but, finding no eatable food, he 
quitted it. The vulture was probably attracted by sight ; yet it 
does not follow that he might not also have smelt the hide, although 
inodorous to the human nose. Audubon farther relates what tells 
against rather than for him — that a dead dog was concealed in 
a narrow ravine, twenty feet below the surface of the earth around 
it, and filled with briars and high canes. Many vultures were 
seen sailing in all directions over the spot, but none of them dis- 
covered the carcass. They were attracted by the smell, but em- 
barrassed by the concealment of the object. The habit of the vul- 
ture is to soar aloft in the air, and not to forage on the ground. 
In opposition to Audubon, a very interesting account of the 
vultur aura was read at the philosophical meeting of the Zoologi- 
cal Society in March 1837. The writer, Mr. Sells, says that the 
powers of vision in the vulture -are very considerable, and of most 
important use to the bird; but that it is principally from its highly 
organized olfactories that it so speedily obtains intelligence of its 
prey. In hot climates, the burial of the dead commonly takes 
place in about twenty-four hours after death, and that necessarily, 
so rapidly does decomposition take place. On one occasion he 
had to make a post-mortem examination of a body within twenty 
hours after death, and in a mill-house completely concealed ; and 
while so engaged, the roof of the mill-house was thickly stud- 
ded with these birds. Another instance was that of an old patient 
and much valued friend, who died at midnight. The family had 
to send for necessaries for the funeral thirty miles, so that the in- 
terment could not take place until the noon of the second day, or 
thirty-six hours after his decease. Long before that time — and a 
most painful sight it was — the ridge of the shingled roof of his house, 
a large mansion, had several of these melancholy heralds of death 
perched upon it, besides many more that had settled in trees in 
its immediate vicinity. In these cases the birds must have been 
directed by smell alone, as sight w&s totally out of the question. 
These anecdotes will not be deemed intrusive, for they settle an 
interesting point of physiology. 
The Olfactory Nerve in different Birds . — It is the same in the 
bird as in the quadruped, the development of the nerve depending 
on the degree in which an acute scent is necessary to the animal. 
The head of one of these vultures was sent to Professor Owen, the 
Curator of the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons. He 
determined to dissect the olfactory organs, and he compared 
them with those of a turkey, a bird that has little need of very 
acute sense of smell. The distribution of these nerves will be a 
matter of consideration presently, — we are now speaking of their 
bulk. They arise by two oval ganglions in the vulture, shewing 
