Page:Aspects of nature in different lands and different climates; with scientific elucidations (IA b29329668 0002).pdf/52

 *[Footnote: *tivity, the Condor can support forty days' hunger; when free, his voracity is excessive, and, vulture-like, is directed by preference to dead flesh.

The mode of capture of Condors in Peru by means of palisades, as described by me, is practised with equal success in Chili. When the bird has gorged himself with flesh, he cannot rise into the air without first running for some little distance with his wings half expanded. A dead ox, in which decomposition is beginning to take place, is strongly fenced round, leaving within the fence only a small space, in which the Condors attracted by the prey are crowded together. When they have gorged themselves with food, the palisades not permitting them to obtain a start by running, they become, as remarked above, unable to rise, and are either killed with clubs by the country people, or taken alive by the lasso. On the first declaration of the political independence of Chili, the Condor appeared on the coinage as the symbol of strength. (Claudio Gay, Historia fisica y politica de Chile, publicada bajo los auspicios del Supremo Gobierno; Zoologia, pp. 194-198.)

Far more useful than the Condor in the great economy of Nature, in the removal of putrefying animal substances and in thus purifying the air in the neighbourhood of human habitations, are the different species of Gallinazos, of which the number of individuals is much greater. In tropical America I have sometimes seen as many as 70 or 80 assembled at once round a dead animal; and I am able, as an eye-witness, to confirm the fact long since stated, but which has recently been doubted by ornithologists, of the whole]*