248 
OBSERVATIONS ON VULTURES 
fodder and hay was pulled out ; but no flesh could the 
bird find or smell ; he was intent on discovering some 
where none existed, and, after reiterated efforts, all 
useless, he took flight, coursed about the field, when, 
suddenly rounding and falling, I saw him kill a small 
garter snake, and swallow it in an instant. The vulture 
rose again, sailed about, and passed several times quite 
low over the stuffed deerskin, as if loth to abandon so 
good looking a prey. 
“ Judge of my feelings when I plainly saw that the 
vulture, which could not discover, through its extra- 
ordinary sense of smell, that no flesh, either fresh or 
putrid, existed about that skin, could at a glance see a 
snake, scarcely as large as a man’s finger, alive, and 
destitute of odour, hundreds of yards distant. I 
concluded that at all events his ocular powers were 
much better than his sense of smell. 
“ Second Experiment , — I had a large dead hog hauled 
some distance from the house, and put into a ravine, 
about twenty feet deeper than the surface of the earth 
around it, narrow and winding much, filled with briars 
and high cane. In this I made the negroes conceal 
the hog, by binding cane over it, until I thought it 
would puzzle either buzzards, carrion crows, or any 
other birds, to see it, and left it for two days. This 
was early in the month of July, when, in this latitude, 
a dead body becomes putrid and extremely fetid in a 
short time. I saw from time to time many vultures, in 
search of food, sail over the field and ravine in all 
directions, but none discovered the carcass, although 
during this time several dogs had visited it and fed 
plentifully on it. I tried to go near it, but the smell 
was so insufferable when within thirty yards, that I 
abandoned it, and the remnants were entirely destroyed 
at last through natural decay. 
“ I then took a young pig, put a knife through its 
neck, and made it bleed on the earth and grass about 
the same, and, having covered it closely with leaves, 
also watched the result. The vultures saw the fresh 
blood, alighted about it, followed it down into the 
