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protected in the negro villages of the interior of 
Africa, and among the Brahmins of India. The 
latter suppose these birds to be animated by the 
souls of those of their own sacred caste. They are 
voracious devourers of carrion. They follow the 
tiger, the jackal, and the vulture, and devour even 
large bones. On opening the body of one of these 
gigantic birds, a land tortoise was found in the craw 
ten inches in length, and a large cat in the stomach. 
Birds are abundantly provided with means of 
offence and defence, as before shewn. I am not 
aware that any are directly poisonous, but the flesh 
of many is disgustful, and produces nausea on being 
received into the human stomach. The flesh of that 
elegant bird the hoopoe is rancid and nauseous. 
The (now probably extinct) dodo was called by the 
sailors, who first eat it on the isle of Mauritius, the 
emetic bird, because the attempt to eat it was at- 
tended with effects which the name suggests. The 
buceros rhinoceros and the gracula foetida are dis- 
gustingly inodorous, even while living. The solan 
goose, pelicanus bassanus, is indeed potent in offensive 
odour; although, when dried and salted, there are 
palates to which it is almost delightful. The fulmar 
feeds entirely on fish, and seems to be through its 
whole substance quite surcharged with rancid oil, 
which it has the power of ejecting forcibly from a 
tubular process of the bill peculiar to the petrel 
genus. This oil it spouts into the face of the in- 
vaders of its nest, to the frequent peril of the climb- 
ers of St. Kilda’s cliffs. 
