TURKEY VULTURE. 
7 
a precision of a different character from that which dis- 
tinguishes vulgar observation. If the Europeans had 
not the opportunity of comparing living specimens of 
the two species, they at least had preserved subjects, in 
their extensive and valuable museums, from which a 
correct judgment might have been formed. The figure 
in the Planches enluminees , though wretchedly drawn 
and coloured, was evidently taken from a stuffed speci- 
men of the black vulture. 
Pennant observes, that the turkey vultures <c are 
not found in the northern regions of Europe or Asia, 
at least in those latitudes which might give them a 
pretence of appearing there. I cannot find them,” he 
continues, “ in our quarter of the globe higher than the 
Orison Alps,* or Silesia, f or at farthest Kalish, in 
Great Poland. ” J 
Kolben, in his account of the Cape of Good Hope, 
mentions a vulture, which he represents as very vora- 
cious and noxious. “ I have seen,” says he, “ many 
carcasses of cows, oxen, and other tame creatures, which 
the eagles had slain. I say carcasses, but they were 
rather skeletons, the flesh and entrails being all devoured, 
and nothing remaining but the skin and bones. But the 
skin and bones being in their natural places, the flesh 
being, as it were, scooped out, and the wound by which 
the eagles enter the body being ever in the belly, you 
would not, till you had come up to the skeleton, have 
had the least suspicion that any such matter had hap- 
pened. The Dutch at the Cape frequently call those 
eagles, on account of their tearing out the entrails of 
beasts, strunt-vogels, i. e. dung-birds. It frequently 
happens, that an ox that is freed from the plough, and 
left to find his way home, lies down to rest himself by 
the way : and if he does so, it is a great chance but the 
eagles fall upon him and devour him. They attack 
* Willughby, Ornithology, p. 67. 
f Schwenckfeldt, av. Silesia , 375. 
1 Rzaczynski, Hist. Nat. Poland, 298. 
