116 
THE VULTURE. 
ceptible in the neighbourhood, Vulture after Vulture, as they 
sailed past, was observed always to descend to the cottage of 
the German, and to sweep round, as if they were aware of 
some putrid carcase, but could not find out where it was. 
This at length led the neighbours to suspect that the poor 
man lay dead in his cottage, as no one had seen him for the 
last two or three days. His door was therefore broken open, 
when he was found in a state of extreme feebleness, but the 
room was most insufferably offensive from something putrefy- 
ing, which could not for a length of time be found, for the 
fever having yearly deprived the poor man of his senses, he 
had no recollection of his uncooked mess of meat and herbs, 
and as no one thought that the kitchen pot could contain 
anything likely to produce putrefaction, search was made 
everywhere but in the right place. At last, however, the 
pot-lid was lifted, and the cause of the insupportable stench 
discovered in the corrupted soup-meat. Here we have then 
clearly proved that the sense of smelling directed the Vultures, 
without any assistance from the sense of sight, and discover^ 
ing unerringly the locality of the putrid matter, when even 
the neighbours themselves were unable for some time to 
detect it. 
A few days succeeding this occurrence, after a night and 
morning of heavy rain, in which the streets had been inun- 
dated to the depth of a foot, and flood after flood had been 
sweeping to the river the drainage of the whole town, a piece 
of fresh offal had been brought down from some of the yards 
where an animal had been slaughtered, and lodged in the 
street. A Vulture, beating about in search of food, dashed 
down in a slanting direction from a considerable height, and 
just resting, without closing her wings, snatched up the fresh j 
piece of flesh, and carried it off. Here was the sense of 
sight clearly unassisted by that of smelling, for the meat was 
too fresh to communicate any taint to the morning air, and 
the Vulture stooped to it from a great distance. 
On another occasion, very near to the time when the above 
two facts occurred, a dead rat had been thrown out early in the 
morning into the street, having been caught in the night. 
