The head of the male condor is furnished with a sort of cartilaginous crest, of an oblong figure, wrinkled and quite slender, resting upon the forehead and hinder part of the beak for about a fourth of its length; at the base of the bill it is free. The female is destitute of this crest. The skin of the head in the male forms folds behind the eye, which descend to ward the neck and terminate in a flabby, dila table or erectile membrane, The structure of the crest is altogether peculiar, bearing very lit tle resemblance to the cock's comb or the wat tles of a turkey. The auricular orifice is of considerable size, but concealed by folds of the temporal membrane. The eye, which is pecu liarly elongated and farther distant from the bealc than the eagle's, is of a purple hue and very brilliant. The neck is uniformly marked by parallel longitudinal wrinkles, though the membrane is not so flabby as that covering the throat, which appear to be caused by the fre quent habit of drawing the neck downward to conceal or warrn it within the collar or hood. The collar in both sexes is a fine silken down, forming a white band between the naked part of the neck and beginning of the true feathers and is rather more than two inches broad, not entirely surrounding the neck, but leaving a very narrow naked space in front. The rest of the surface, the back, wings and tail are of a slightly grayish-black, though sometimes they are bnlliantly black; the feathers are triangular and placed over each other tile-wise. Hum boldt never saw male condors with white backs, though descriptions of such have been given by Molina and others. The primaries are black; the secondaries in both sexes are exteriorly edged with white. The wing-coverts, however, offer the best distinction of the sexes, being grayish-black in the female, while in the male their tips, and even half of the shafts, are whiter so that his wings are ornamented with beautiful white spots. The tail is bladcish, wedge-shaped, rather short and contains 12 feathers. The feet are very robust and of an ashen blue color marked with white wrinldes. The claws are blackish, very long and but slightly hooked. The four toes are united by an obvious but delicate membrane; the fourth is the smallest and has the most crooked claw.
The largest male condor described by boldt was three feet three inches long from the tip of the beak to the tip of the tail; height, when perched, with the nec.k moderately ex
tended, two feet eight inches; from the tip of one extended wing to the tip of the other, eight feet nine inches. Humboldt states that he never saw a condor which measured more than nine feet across the wings; but a specimen described by Dr. Shaw measured 14 feet. Notwithstand ing, therefore, what is said by Humboldt of the general correspondence in size of the Alpine lammergeyer and the condor of the Andes, we cannot avoid believing that a full-grown indi vidual of the latter species would be much more than a match in every respect for any Euro pean species. The condor is peculiarly tena cious of life and has been observed, after hav ing been hung for a considerable time by the neck in a noose, to rise and walk away quickly when taken down for dead, and to receive sev eral pistol bullets in its body without appearing greatly injured. Its plumage defends its body to a considerable degree from the effects of shot. It is easily killed when shot, or struck sufficiently hard, about the head.
A very similar species is the California con dor or vulture, which may be easily distin guished from the true condor, which it nearly equals in size, by the lack of the white neck ruff and of the caruncle of the male. The Cali fornia vulture formerly ranged on the Pacific coast into British Columbia, but its habitat is said to be shrinlcing and now reaches only to Monterey on the north. The species may be ap proaching extinction. Like the condor, in addi tion to feeding on carrion, it attacks and kills young or sick animals, particularly lambs and calves. The rough nest of sticks, in which two dirty-white eggs are laid, is built on the ground, rock ledges or stumps. Consult Adams, 'The Condor) (Vol. IX, California 1907) ; Beebe,