THE SENSES OF SIGHT AND SMELL. 
An<-.3^^J<XVlii.,^o.to. p.J-2-3, 
Port ^oyal, Tbnn. 
Editor Ambbicast 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 
j 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 
^yow jja M zzard,, sitting on its roost, can- 
not Seea dead dog three 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 feke 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. 
tracted by a number of black vultures, in some tall Indian 
corn, 'in a creek bottom. Their Wark plumage formed a 
striking contrast^with the green leaves of corn fluttering in 
the morning breeze, as they stood in dense array not ten 
steps from the road. What meant this grave assembiy of 
these black attendants of death — mortis comites et fimeris 
atri? My curiosity led me to disturb this silent tete-a-tete ; 
they took flight at my approach, and for some seconds the 
noise of their sounding pinions could be heard, as it grew 
fainter and fainter, and died away in the distance. The 
ground, where they had stood, was covered thick with their 
foot-prints ; but no sign of what had attracted them was yet 
visible. A search of a few seconds, however, revealed to me 
a dead dog, lying on the creek bank, and surrounded by tall 
swamp grass four or five feet high. The dead animal had 
not been touched to all appearances, save that the empty 
sockets disclosed the fact that the eyes had been torn out. 
On the 13th of August, it was announced to me, that a 
black snake, in his eager pursuit of a lizzard, whose domi- 
cile was under the well curbing, had fallen into the well. A 
couple of fish hooks attached to the end of a long pole, were 
lowered, and the reptile, writhing and struggling on the 
hooks, was soon raised to the top and dispatched. To pre- 
vent the noisome odor caused by the copper-belly, the black 
snake was carried and thfown some distance from the yard. 
About 13 o’clock of the third day after this event, a turkey 
vulture was seen soaring over.the lot, and,]an hour afterward, 
three of these birds, gliding within a few feet of the ground, 
sailed in a straight line, and pitched where the dead snake was 
thrown. This occurred on the 15th when, without doubt, 
under our intense Summer heat, putrefaction of the snake 
had begun. 
Do these observations indicate vision, rather than olfac- 
tion, as the sense by which these vultures were attracted, in 
each case ? Is it clear that vision, rather than olfaction, 
discovered to the turkey vulture on the fence the presence 
of the dead chicken ? The vision-theorist will perhaps say 
the vulture being there signified nothing. To those ac- 
quainted with the habits of these birds, the lighting of a 
vulture on or near the ground is strong evidence of the 
proximity of carrion. The writer happened to know that 
the dead chicken was near the spot where the vulture was 
perched, and he knew also that it was completely concealed 
from the view even of a vulture’s piercing eye. The local- 
ity also, is not one frequented by vultures, nor where they 
came habitually to feed, as they do around slaughter pens, 
or the streets of Southern towns. It is in the country, where 
a vulture may not be seen for days, till something dead at- 
tracts him, when he appears as if by magic on the scene, 
and as mysteriously disappears, till summoned again into 
the presence of death. 
The other instances cited, where the atmosphere was 
charged with the stench of the putrid copper-belly, and that 
where the vulture lighted on the yard gate, indicate clearly 
to my mind that the sense of smell, in each case, attracted 
the vulture to the spot and led him to the discovery of the 
dead object. 
It is not equally plain that the black vultures found the 
dead dog— in the tall grass on the creek bank — by the sense 
of smell ; though it is probable they came upon the dog 
thus, as, to have seen it, they must have flown directly over 
it, the spot exposed to vision being scarcely a yard square ; 
and in this space lay the dead animal, surrounded on all 
sides by grass four or five feet high. 
The last instance of the black snake taken from the well, 
seems to me to prove, without doubt ; that vultures discover 
carrion by the sense of smell. 
Why did not the keen-eyed vultures discover this snake 
until decomposition had commenced ? If they see every- 
thing far and near under the broad heavens, why should 
they wait till the third day — everything, even to a little 
snake not larger than the thumb, why postpone their com- 
ing so long, and then quarter the air, round and round, as a 
dog quarters his ground for the body scent of the scattered 
birds, and, in ever-narrowing circles, at last locate and 
light on the spot where lay the object of their search ? Can 
the conclusion be avoided — that vultures discover carrion 
by the sense of smell ?, 
My object in writing this article has not been to show 
that our vultures do not find their prey by the sense of 
sight, but that they do sometimes discover it by the sense 
of smell. Soaring, as they do, at amazing heights, they 
must see far beyond the circumscribed horizon that limits 
our vision. Perhaps they watch one another’s movements. 
At different altitudes, one above the other, they allow noth- 
ing, doubtless, to escape their vigilant eye ; and, when one 
ceases his gyrations, and, with half closed wings, stoops 
toward some point on his horizon, another and another fol- 
low, till, for miles around, as it were, an endless stream 
pours in from all sides toward the distant object. The first 
vulture may find the- tainted current, and with meandering 
flight, may trace it to its source ; but small must be the 
prey, if his companions, observant of all events below, ar- 
rive not in time to share it with him. 
Greensboro, Ala. 
HOW SNAKES SWALLOW THEIR PREY. 
^ BY DR. MORRIS GIBBS. 
The writer has long considered the process of swallowing, 
