CONDOR. 
Catharte Condor , Temm. & Laug. pi. col. 133, adult Male, 494, head of the adult living 
Male, 408, young Female. 
Condur Vulture, Lath. Syn. p. 4. Id. Suppl. p. 1 . Id. Suppl. II, p. l, pi. CXX. Id. 
Gen. Hist. I, p. 4, pi. 1 , adult Male. Hawkesw. Voy. I, p. 75. Wood’s Zoography , 
I, p. 371. Stevenson, Voy. Am. II. p. 59. 
Der Condor Geier, of German authors. 
Cabinet of the Academy of Natural Sciences. 
To such a degree has its history been exaggerated by fable, 
that the mention of the Condor immediately recalls to mind the 
Roc, of Marco Polo and the Arabian Tales. Some authors have 
indeed referred this name to it, and even go so far as to make it 
the subject of one of the labours of Hercules, the destruction of 
the Stymphalian birds. Such in fact were the stories related by 
the early travellers, that even when reduced to what in the 
judgment of Buffon was their real value, it cannot but now appear 
unaccountable that they should ever have found credence, and 
still more so that compilers should have gone on accumulating 
under the Condor’s history not merely the tales told of it, but 
others collected from every quarter of the globe, however remote 
or different in climate, not hesitating to give currency to the most 
revolting absurdities. The accounts of Father Feuillee, who was 
the first describer, Frezier, and especially Hawkesworth’s, appear 
however to be tolerably correct; while the ardent imagination of 
Garcilasso led him to indulge in the wildest extravagances in 
relation to this bird. Abbeville and de Laet, no less than Acosta, 
in his History of the Indies, ascribed to this cowardly Vulture the 
strength, courage, and raptorial habits of an Eagle, and even in 
a higher degree, thus doing him the honour to represent him as 
formidable to every living creature, and the dreaded enemy of 
man himself. Desmarchais improves if possible upon these stories, 
giving the Condor still greater size and strength, and stating that 
f 
