10 
CATHARTES AURA. 
There is little or no other perceptible difference between 
the sexes. 
The bird from which the foregoing description was 
taken, was shot for this work, at Great Egg Harbour, 
on the 30th of January. It was a female, in perfect 
plumage, excessively fat, and weighed five pounds one 
ounce, avoirdupois. On dissection, it emited a slight 
musky odour. 
The vulture is included in the catalogue of those 
fowls declared unclean and an abomination by the Levi- 
tical law, and which the Israelites were interdicted 
eating.* We presume that this prohibition w^as religi- 
ously observed, so far at least as it related to the vulture, 
from whose flesh there arises such an unsavoury odour, 
that we question if all the sweetening processes ever 
invented could render it palatable to Jew, Pagan, or 
Christian. 
Since the above has been ready for the press, we have 
seen the History of the Expedition under the com- 
mand of Louis and Clark, and find our conjecture with 
respect to the migration of the turkey buzzard verified, 
several of this species having been observed at Brant 
Island, near the Falls of the Columbia, f 
2. CATHARTES ATRATUS VULTUR ATRATUS , WILSON. 
BLACK VULTURE, OR CARRION CROW OF AMERICA. 
WILSON, PL. LXXV. FIG. II EDINBURGH COLLEGE MUSEUM. 
Although an account of this vulture w r as published 
more than tw enty years ago, by Mr William Bartram, 
wherein it w 7 as distinctly specified as a different species 
from the preceding, yet it excites our surprise that the 
* Leviticus , xi, 14. Deuteronomy , xiv, 13. 
f History of the Expedition, vol. ii, p. 233. 
