CONDOR. 
15 
is bare, witli the exception of some scattered short and rigid 
hairs; it is reddish, and has two short pear-shaped processes 
depending from it. Two intertwisted fleshy strings arise from the 
bill, pass over the auditory region, and descend along the sides of 
the neck: these fleshy cords acquire by desiccation, in stuffed 
specimens, the appearance of a series of tubercles or wrinkled 
protuberances: a double string of a similar substance passes above 
the eye, which is small, much lengthened, and lateral, being set 
far back from the bill: the irides are of an olive gray. Their 
cavernous structure enables the bird to swell out all these 
appendages at pleasure, like the Turkey: the crest, however, 
must be excepted, which is very dissimilar to the flaccid, pendulous 
cone of the Turkey, and incapable of dilatation. The orifice of 
the ear is very large, subrounded, but hidden under the folds of 
the temporal membrane. The occiput exhibits a few short brown 
bristles. Around the lower part of the neck above is a beautiful 
half collar of silky and very soft down as white as snow, which 
separates the naked parts from the feathered body. In front this 
collar is interrupted, and the neck is bare down to the black 
plumage : this gap in the collar can however only be discovered 
on close inspection. The whole plumage is of a very deep blue 
black; the tips of the secondaries and the greater wing-coverts 
on the outer web only being of a whitish pearl-gray: the first 
seven outer quills are wholly black, twenty-seven being white on 
their outer web : the third quill is the longest. The wings are 
three feet nine inches long, reaching nearly to the tip of the tail, 
but not passing beyond, as in the closely related species the 
Californian Condor. The tail is very slightly rounded at the 
end, rather short in proportion to the bird, measuring thirteen 
inches. The feet are bluish : the toes connected at their base by 
a membrane. 
The female is entirely destitute of crest or other appendages. 
