24 
THE CONDOR. 
seldom exceeds three feet in length and nine and a half 
feet in extent.* The tail one foot two inches. The 
bill is straight and hooked at the point ; the plumage is white 
in front, everywhere else of a brownish gray ; head bare of 
feathers and covered with hard wrinkled skin, scattered over 
with blackish hairs, and it has a collar of white silky down 
between the bare and the feathered part of the neck. The 
feet are stout, and the nails long and crooked. 
ILLUSTRATIVE ANECDOTES. 
Sir Francis Head, in his gallop across the Pampas, and 
his visit to the Andes, frequently encountered Condors. He 
relates the account of a struggle between one of his Cornish 
miners and a Condor gorged with food, and therefore not in 
the best state for a fray. The man began by grasping the 
bird round the neck, which he tried to break ; but the bird, 
roused by the unceremonious attack, struggled so violently 
as to defeat the plan ; nor, after an hour’s struggling, though 
the miner brought away several of the wing-feathers in 
token of victory, does it appear that the bird was des- 
patched. 
The Condor is not only captured with the lasso, but he is 
taken by various traps and stratagems. According to Mr. 
Darwin, the Chilenos are in the habit of marking the trees 
* The term extent , applied to the description of birds, means the 
distance from tip to tip of the extended wings. 
