Page:The birds of America, volume 1.djvu/25

 15 THE TURKEY-BUZZARD. -f Cathartes aura, Linn. PLATE II.— Male and Young. This species* is far from being known throughout the United States, for it has never been seen farther eastward than the confines of New Jersey. None, I believe, have been observed in New York; and on asking about it in Massachusetts and Maine, I found that, excepting those persons acquainted with our birds generally, none knew it. On my late northern journeys I nowhere saw it. A very few remain and spend the winter in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, where I have seen them only during summer, and where they breed. As we proceed farther south, they become more and more abundant. They are equally attached to maritime districts, and the vicinity of the sea-shore, where they find abundance of food. The Turkey-Buzzard was found in abundance on the Rocky Mountains and along the Columbia River by Lewis and Clark, as well as subsequently by Mr. Townsend, although it is said by Mr. David Douglas to be extremely rare on the north-west coast of America. On the Island of Galveston in Texas, where it is plentiful, we several times found its nest, as usual, on the ground, but on level parts of salt marshes, either under the wide-spread branches of cactuses, or among tall grass growing beneath low bushes, on but in the class of birds, experiments and observations are wanting to determine its precise function, although analogy would lead us to suppose it to be the same in them. So inaccu- rate have observers been in this matter, that some of them have mistaken the large branch of the fifth pair, which traverses the nasal cavity, for the olfactory nerve. The experiments instituted upon Vultures shew that not only are they not led to their prey by the sense of smell, but also that they are not made sensible by it of the presence of food when in their immediate proximity. Yet, if the olfactory nerve be really the nerve of smell, and if a large expansion of the nasal membrane be indicative of an extension of the faculty, one would necessarily infer that Vultures must possess it in a high degree. On the other hand, how- ever, the organ and the nerves being found to be equally developed in birds, such as Geese and Gallinaceous species, which have never been suspected of being guided by smell when searching for food, it would seem to follow that the precise function of this nerve, and the nasal cavities, has not yet been determined in birds. That the nasal passages must be sub- servient to some other purpose than that of respiration merely, is evident from their com- plexity, but what that purpose is, remains to be determined by accurate observations and experiments.
 * The olfactory nerve has been ascertained in the mammalia to be the instrument of smell;