and affect the olfactory nerves of birds 
at so many miles distant. We were 
disposed to believe that these birds 
were directed towards the carrion 
rather by the sense of seeing than by 
that of smelling. This opinion is con- 
firmed by the following observations 
of our friend Audubon, communicated 
to us by him some time ago for our 
Philosophical Journal^ 
Here follows at length Audubon's 
communication, from which I extract 
the following passages: 
"My First Experiment was as follows: 
I procured a skin of our common deer, 
entire to the hoofs, and stuffed it care- 
fully with dried grass until filled rather 
above the natural size, — suffered the 
whole to become perfectly dry and as 
hard as leather — took it to the middle 
of a large open field, and laid it down 
upon its back with the legs up and apart, 
as if the animal were dead and putrid. 
I then retired about a few hundred 
yards, and in the lapse of some minutes 
a vulture coursing around the field, 
tolerably high, espied the skin, sailed 
directly towards it, and alighted within 
a few yards of it. I ran immediately, 
covered by a large tree, until within 
about forty yards, and from that place 
could spy the bird with ease. He ap- 
proached the skin, looked at it with- 
out apparent suspicion, raised his tail 
and voided itself freely (as you well 
know all birds of prey in a wild state 
generally do before feeding), then ap- 
proaching the eyes, that were here 
solid globes of hard, dried, and painted 
clay, attacked first one and then the 
other, with, however, no farther advan- 
tage than that of disarranging them. 
This part was abandoned; the bird 
walked to the other extremity of the 
pretended animal, and there, with 
much exertion, tore the stitches apart, 
until much fodder and hay were pulled 
out; but no flesh could the bird find or 
smell; he was intent on finding some 
where none existed, and, after reiter- 
ated efforts, all useless, he took flight, 
coursed round the field, when, sud- 
denly turning 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 deer- 
skin, 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 extraordinary 
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 odor, 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 wind- 
ing much, filled with briars and high 
cane. In this I made the negroes con- 
ceal 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 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, al- 
though 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 of it 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 
ravine, discovered by the blood of the 
pig, and devoured it, when yet quite 
fresh, within my sight." 
He pursues the subject at some 
length, recounting other experiments; 
but these, were they not even given 
on the authority of Audubon— 
clarum et venerabile nomen — seem to me 
to be conclusive. 
22 Irving place, New York 
164 
