Page:Ornithological biography, or an account of the habits of the birds of the United States of America, vol 2.djvu/71

 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 thick as a man's finger, alive, and destitute of odour, 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 winding much, filled with briars and high cane. In this I made the negroes conceal 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 dead 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, although 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, 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 place, 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 the pig, and devoured it, when yet quite fresh, within my sight.

Not contented with these experiments, which I already thought fully conclusive, having found two young Vultures, about the size of pullets, covered yet with down, and looking more like quadrupeds than birds, I had them brought home and put into a large coop in the yard, in the view of every body, and attended to their feeding myself. I gave them a great number of Red-headed Woodpeckers and Parokeets, birds then easy to procure, as they were feeding daily on the mulberry trees in the immediate neighbourhood of my orphans.

These the young Vultures could tear to pieces by putting both feet on the body, and applying the bill with great force. So accustomed to my going towards them were they in a few days, that when I approached the cage with hands filled with game for them, they immediately began