VULTUR. Illtg. Temm• VULTURE Bill thick and strong, much more elevated than broad, the base covered with a cere ; the upper mandible straight, curved only towards the tip : the under mandible straight, rounded, and inclined towards the tip ; head naked, or covered with a very short down ; nostrils naked, lateral, and diagonally pierced near the margin of the cere ; legs robust, furnished with claws slightly hooked ; the middle toe very long, and united to the outer at the base ; wings long, the first quill short, and the sixth the longest.
As the strength of their claws does not correspond with the size of their bodies, vultures have most frequently re course to their beak for seizing and tearing their prey. When glutted with food, their crop projects from above their breast, a fetid humour exudes from the nostrils, and they fall into a state of listlessness, bordering on stupidity. They are much more common in warm than in cold cli mates. When compared with eagles and hawks, they. are cowardly and ignoble, seldom killing their prey from choice, but in general devouring only such animals as are either dying, or found dead and putrid. Though often put to flight by birds much inferior to themselves, if not molested, they will prey in the midst of cities. In some of the battles of the east, in which an extensive slaughter of elephants, horses, and men, takes place, voracious ani mals crowd to the field from every quarter, particularly jackals, hyaenas, and vultures. Even in regions where the last mentioned are at other times seldom observed, the plains will, on these occasions, be found covered with them ; and multitudes of them will be seen descending from the air on every side, insomuch that the Indians be lieve they have a presentiment of slaughter some days be fore the event.
V. fulvus, Gmel. &c. Fulvous Vulture. Grey or brown, inclining to fulvous ; down of the head and neck cinereous; collar white, sometimes mixed with brown ; feathers of the wings and tail brown ; bill and legs plum: bcous. The body is larger than that of the golden eagle,
measuring four feet in length, the legs are more than a foot long, and the neck is seven inches. The body of the male is smaller than that of the female.
The fulvous vulture is pretty generally diffused on the mountains of the old continent, as in Turkey, the Archi pelago, Silesia, the Tyrol, the Alps and Pyrenees, and throughouCAfrica. It is said to he common in the neigh bourhood of Gibraltar. It builds its nest on precipitous cliffs. Tile eggs arc of a grey-white, marked with some spots of rufous-white. The individuals of this species kept in the Parisian menagerie generally live quietly, and in apparent harmony with one another, in their narrow confinement ; but they occasionally manifest much agita tion and discontent.
The academicians, who dissected two females, have ob served, that the bill is longer and less curved than in the at the base of the beak are placed the two nos trils, each six lines long and two broad, which affords an ample space for the external organs of smell ; that the tongue is hard and cartilaginous, scooped near the tip, and the edges elevated into serrated ranges, pointing towards the gullet ; that the ccsophagus dilates below, and forms a large sac, differing from the crop of fowls only by the interspersed ramifications of a great number of vessels ; that the gizzard is neither so hard nor so thick as in the gallinaceous tribe ; that the intestines and ccecum are small, &c. Now, from these observations we may infer,. that, though vultures feed on flesh as eagles do, they have not the same conformation in the organs of digestion, and that in this last respect they approach much nearer to poultry, and other birds that live on grain ; so that they are perhaps occasionally granivorous or omnivorous.
The present species, we should remark, is synonymous with V. lencoce,Ihalus, Meyer ; V. percnopterus, Daudin ; and V. trenkalos, Bechst.