FUNCTIONS. 
215 
bread. The most unpretending workers among these are 
the Vultures, especially the smaller species, the Egyptian 
Vulture and others. They are poor inoffensive mendi¬ 
cants, who never show any inclination to commit murder. 
If they are fortunate enough to find a carcase, they devour 
as much as the weakness of their beaks will allow them ; 
they are, however, as a rule, contented to subsist on the 
excreta of both man and beast, and some apparently 
sustain life rather on these and offal from the habitations 
of man, than on carrion. Thus, owing to the food they 
eat, these birds are amongst the most useful scavengers 
of tropical towns, and their constant activity in pursuit of 
food keeps off pestilence from the more densely inhabited 
quarters. 
The larger and more powerful members of this family, 
the true Vultures, despise such loathsome food: they 
devour carcases of vertebrate animals of all kinds. 
These birds also, and not unreasonably, fall under 
the grave imputation of attacking sick or dying men 
and beasts in out-of-the-way places, and of devouring 
them alive; they must, however, rank among the 
lowest of all Raptor es. The well-known and notorious 
Lammergeir holds but a slightly higher rank above 
these low types, for it only attacks a living creature 
when able to throw it over a precipice from the sud¬ 
denness of its onset, and at the same time feeds mostly 
upon carrion, especially on the bones of carcases. The 
true Sea Eagles are thorough thieves, yet the dead 
bodies of animals thrown up by the sea form the principal 
part of their food; nevertheless they will also kill game 
when they come across it. The Buzzards much resemble 
these birds; they feed chiefly on living animals of a 
small size when compared to their own ; they also eat 
