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ALMOST HUMAN 
The Kolbe vultures, too, are excellent samples of the tribe. It is 
supposed that when the discussion about the size of the largest eagles 
is under weigh people confuse eagles and vultures, for vultures are very- 
much larger than the largest eagles. They have not the prehensile talons 
of the eagle, and need very much broader perches to rest upon. Indeed, 
they never go into trees if they can find a good rocky ledge for a resting 
place. It is a point in the vultures’ favor that they are carrion birds 
and rarely or never kill for food. Unlike the eagles, they do not carry 
off their food to eat elsewhere, but expect to feast where the animal has 
fallen. Both of these birds, however, have the gift of extraordinary 
sight. A vulture may be watching an animal dying. It will rise in 
the air as it sees the end approaching, and circle round and round the 
helpless body. For twenty miles around his flight will be observed by 
other vultures, who immediately set off in his direction. For a radius 
of twenty miles further back again the movements of these birds will 
have been observed by all the other vultures about, and they, too, will set 
off for the place of meeting. Thus, in an ever-widening circle these 
great birds rise high in air to follow the others, and before the last 
breath has left the body of the marked animal the sky will be darkened 
with all the vultures that were lurking within a circumference of two- 
hundred miles. They will not leave the carcase until it has been per- 
fectly skeletonised, and so as scavengers they are invaluable in hot parts 
of Africa. Their long bare necks, so repulsive to our ideas of beauty, 
are provided by Nature so that they can thrust their heads into the body 
of a dead animal and withdraw them quite clean. Had they been clothed 
with feathers the difficulty of keeping themselves clean in such arid coun- 
tries would have been insurmountable. The eagle tears his food strip 
by strip from the body, the vulture rather chews in a less ravenous 
fashion. Instead of using his beak and feet as weapons of offence and 
defence like the eagle, he uses the pinion joints of his wings with so 
great force that one blow from them is sufficient to fell a man. 
THE WISE ADJUTANT. 
The Adjutant bird is another scavenger like the vulture, and in India 
it shares the honors with the jackal of making places habitable. It 
haunts the banks of the Ganges watching for the bodies of the poor natives 
whom the faithful have thrown into the river in the hope of securing the 
future happiness of the departed soul. The jackal will probably be 
the one to draw the body from the water, and, standing with his fore- 
feet over it, he will raise his voice and cry to the surrounding country: 
‘‘T’ve got a dead Hindoo!” in one long, wailing monotone. And the 
