CONDOR. 
9 
have more than twelve. The principal traits, both moral and 
physical, are the same in all the birds composing this highly 
natural family. 
All in fact are distinguished by having their head, which is 
small, and their neck, more or less naked, these parts being 
deprived of feathers, and merely furnished with a light down, or 
a few scattered hairs. Their eyes are prominent, being set even 
with the head, and not deep sunk in the socket, as in Eagles and 
other rapacious birds. They have the power of drawing down 
their head into a sort of collar formed by longer feathers at the 
base of the neck: sometimes they withdraw the whole neck 
and part of the head into this collar, so that the bird looks as if 
it had drawn its whole neck down into the body. They have 
a crop covered with setaceous feathers, or sometimes woolly 
or entirely naked, and prominent, especially after indulging their 
voracious appetite. Their feet are never feathered like those of 
an Eagle, although they have been unnaturally so represented 
in the plates of some authors. The tarsus is shorter than the 
middle toe, which is connected at its base by a membrane with 
the outer one. The claws are hardly retractile, comparatively 
short, and from these birds’ habit of keeping much on the 
ground, instead of always perching, as the Falconidse, they are 
neither sharp pointed nor much curved. Their wings are long 
and subacuminate, the third and fourth primaries being longest: 
they are lined beneath with a thick down of a peculiar and very 
soft nature. 
The young birds have their head entirely covered with down, 
which gradually falls off as they advance in age. The female is 
larger than the male: their plumage varies greatly with age, and 
they moult but once a year. The young are easily distinguished 
by their downy head and neck, these parts in the adult being 
naked, and by the absence of the caruncles which in some species 
VOL. iv.—c 
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