rods, G silk lines and No. 7 Skinner spoons. These fish 
were all taken in Lost Lake, one and one-half miles 
northeast of Lake St. Germain and about twelve miles west 
of Eagle River. We also took a large number of black 
bass, two of which weighed a trifle less than six pounds 
each.” C. L. B. 
Monticbllo, Minn., September 8. — ^The latest news in 
fishing is of a gent who was fishing for minnows with a min- 
now hook. A twenty-pound pickerel struck it and he 
played it until it was weary. He could not pull it up onto 
the bridge from which he was fishing, so pulled it up a 
forty-foot bank, through stumps, logs, etc., and reduced itto 
possession. W. 
T Columbia, Conn.— Wm. Foote of this place recently 
^ caught from the Columbia reservoir a black bass that was the 
n admiration of every one fortunate enough to feast the vision 
” upon it. -It weighed, one hour after being taken out of the 
1 water, four pounds and seven ounces. W. H. T. 
3 
THE SENSES OF SIGHT AND SMELL. 
P.X3-3. 
’ Pout /Royal, Tenn. 
Editor American Field When I wrote you recently 
combatting the theory that buzzards find their food by 
sight, not smell, I determined to experiment and test the 
matter in the most thorough and Impartial manner. I 
used the body of a dead dog, which had been shot and 
lying undisturbed for two days; it showed signs of de- 
composition, and maggots were attacking its body where 
the shot holes were. I took it up and concealed it in 
a fence corner, under a dense growth of bushes, the 
leaves covering it completely, and left it there. About 
eight o’clock the following morning two buzzards 
appeared and flew in a circle over the carcass and then dis- 
appeared. In an hour or two three buzzards appeared and 
alighted near the dead dog, and shortly after several more 
made their appearance and perched on the fence near the 
carcass ; three carrion crows also appeared, but they circled 
high and did not alight. 
The wind was blowing from the southwest and I observed 
the buzzards searched the air persistently about forty yards 
from the dog on the northwest side. It was plainly to be 
seen that they were guided by scent. The same wind had 
wafted the odor to their nesting place on the bluff, nearly a 
mile away. At length they gave up the search and disap- 
peared. 
About the same time of day on the morning following the 
above events, three buzzards appeared and tried it again, 
this time searching the air in all directions, finally alighting 
near the dog, but failed to find it and flew away. I expect 
they will keep coming if they are not disgusted and dis- 
couraged. 
This settles the question, in my mind, as to how carrion 
I birds find their food. I knew, before making this test, that 
' it was all nonsense about buzzards finding their food by 
sight. If such was the case they would appear as soon as 
the animals they feed on die, whereas they rarely ever ap- 
pear before the second or third day, and it requires hot 
weather, which hastens decomposition, to bring them in- 
side of a week or ten days. 
Both Comstock and Audubon assert that carrion birds 
find their food by sight, but in this they are wrong. Any 
know ..a bii zzard, sitting on its roost, can- 
not See a dead dogthre^miles away; but as soon as decom- 
position sets in he will sniff it from afar and fly to it. He 
is guided alone by scent, which is very powerful and acute. 
The scientific gentlemen are “off ” on this question, as well 
as many others. They tell us the snake does not swallow 
its young, while every old hunter knows that all viviparous 
snakes carry their young in their bellies until they are 
large enough to take care of themselves. 
Scientists tell us, also, that rabdomancy, or the use of the 
divining rod, is a humbug and a delusion, and only prac- 
ticed and believed in by the ignorant and superstitious- 
But the divining rod is no more of a humbug than the 
mariner’s compass, which I can demonstrate as clearly and 
conclusively as the simplest problem in mathematics. With 
■ the divining rod I can find and locate underground streams 
with as much certainty and accuracy as surface streams by 
sight. But it is a force that is not recognized by scientific 
men; it exists, however, and is as positive as gravitation. 
Birdo. 
’ ' Mural 
t 
, VULTURES DISCOVER CARRION BY THE SENSE 
; OF SMELL, 
/ BY W. C. A. 
3 For many years it was my belief that Cathartes aura, the 
3 turkey vulture, and OatTiarista atrata, the black vulture, or 
- carrion crow as it is commonly called here, prey by sight 
3 alone. Audubon’s experiments had strengthened that be- 
1 lief ; and the notion generally prevalent that these vultures 
; can smell their prey, and thus discover it, appeared to me 
T without foundation in fact. 
t Observations, however, made during the last three or 
. four years, have induced the belief that these birds scent 
t and trace, through the air, the direction of putrid flesh, as a 
- dog winds his quarry on the ground. 
The facts which have modified the writer’s views on this 
I subject, are given below; they are related just as they oc- 
l curved ; and it is left to the reader to decide whether my 
) proposition: “Our vultures discover carrion by the sense 
t of smell,” is sustained by these observations. 
1 Before giving the particular instances referred to, some 
- general remarks will perhaps not be inappropriate. 
1 No offensive decomposing animal matter, however small, 
- escapes the acute senses of these strange birds— strange be- 
i cause they are ever absent until attracted by their prey. 
> You may scan the horizon far and near, and not a vulture 
, will be seen for weeks or months. But lo ! some animal 
! dies, and the clang of the black vulture’s pinions may be 
1 heard morning and evening as he passes to and from the 
I banquet of death, or the turkey vulture may be seen gliding 
I noiselessly by in the company of his fellow scavengers. 
I The sense of sight may reveal to these birds any large dead 
I animal ; but how are we to explain, by this sense, the omni- 
presence of the vulture, when an animal not larger than a 
' little chicken, or a small snake, is undergoing putrefaction ? 
He detects carrion in the densest f orests, and in the rankest 
. and most luxuriant undergrowth, impenetrable to any eye. 
' It has been told the writer, that, in the overflows of the 
Mississippi River, when drowned cattle have been stranded 
and covered almost completely with sand and mud, vultures 
have been known to congregate over the spot beneath which 
i some dead animal lay, and which it appeared to the ob- 
server that the sense of smell alone could have revealed to 
them. 
I Is it probable that the olfactories, also, of these birds 
I would be as highly developed, as anatomists represent them 
I to be, if olfaction were not acute ? UU irritatio ibi affluxus: 
, there is no exception to this physiological truth. This irri- 
tation, in other words this constant use of the olfactories, 
! has caused the afflux of blood to them, and their ex- 
3 traordinary development in these vultures. Every muscle 
; and nerve of any animal organism are stimulated to growth 
> by exercise ; and, in this instance, it is not reasonable to 
, suppose, that nature would bestow a highly developed 
I apparatus for smelling, if no use were to be made of it. 
[ Thus, a priori, it seems to be proved that vultures dis- 
cover carrion by the sense of smell ; but we are not left to 
I theory alone to confirm this proposition. Following are 
3 some observations, which appear to me to point to olfaction 
as the sense by which our vultures discover their prey. 
About four years ago my attention was attracted by a 
turkey vulture, sitting on a fence, near a thicket where a 
dead chicken had been thrown. 
During the past Spring, while an odor of putrefaction 
\ emanating from some small dead animal was pervading the 
atmosphere of my yard, a turkey vulture pitched upon the 
yard gate near the tainted locality. 
In July last, a large copper-belly snake was killed in the 
yard, and thrown just outside of the inclosure, in a thicket. 
The air for some distance around the spot was filled with 
the stench ; and a turkey vulture, apparently in search of 
the source of this exhalation, lighted on the shed which 
covers the well, and shortly afterward pitched on the ground 
where the dead snake lay. 
One day, during the same month, my attention was at 
