Note 2 — PHYSIOGNOMY OF PLANTS.

p. 4.—“The Condor, the giant of the Vulture tribe.”

In my Recueil d’Observations de Zoologie et d’Anatomie comparée, vol. i. pp. 26-45, I have given the natural history of the Condor, which, before my journey to the equatorial regions, had been much misrepresented. (The name of the bird is properly Cuntur in the Inca language; in Chili, in the Araucan, Mañque; Sarcoramphus Condor of Duméril.) I made and had engraved a drawing of the head from the living bird, and of the size of nature. Next to the Condor, the Lämmergeier of Switzerland, and the Falco destructor of Daudin, probably the Falco Harpyia of Linnæus, are the largest flying birds.

The region which may be regarded as the ordinary haunt of the Condor begins at the height of Etna, and comprises atmospheric strata from ten to eighteen thousand (about 10600 to 19000 English) feet above the level of the sea. Humming birds, which make summer excursions as far as 61° N. latitude on the north-west coast of America on the one hand, and the Tierra del Fuego on the other, have been seen by Von Tschudi (Fauna Peruana, Ornithol. p. 12) in Puna as high as 13700 (14600 English) feet. There is a pleasure in comparing the largest and the smallest of the feathered inhabitants of the air. Of the Condors, the largest individuals found in the chain of the Andes round Quito measured, with extended wings, 14 (nearly 15 English) feet, and the smallest 8 (8½ English) feet. From these dimensions, and from the visual angle at which the bird often appeared vertically above our heads, we are enabled to infer the enormous height to which the Condor soars when the sky is serene. A visual angle of 4´, for example, gives a perpendicular height above the eye of 6876 (7330 English) feet. The cave (Machay) of Antisana, which is opposite the mountain of Chussulongo, and from whence we measured the height of the soaring bird, is 14958 (15942 English) feet above the surface of the Pacific. This would give the absolute height attained by the Condor at fully 21834 (23270 English) feet; an elevation at which the barometer would hardly reach 12 French inches, but which yet does not surpass the highest summits of the Himalaya. It is a remarkable physiological phenomenon, that the same bird, which can fly round in circles for hours in regions of an atmosphere so rarified, should sometimes suddenly descend, as on the western declivity of the Volcano of Pichincha, to the sea-shore, thus passing rapidly through all gradations of climate. The membranous air-bags of the Condor, if filled in the lower regions of the atmosphere, must undergo extraordinary distension at altitudes of more than 23000 English feet. Ulloa, more than a century ago, expressed his astonishment that the vulture of the Andes could soar in regions where the atmospheric pressure is less than 14 French inches, (Voyage de l’Amérique meridionale, T. ii. p. 2, 1752; Observations astronomiques et physiques, p. 110). It was then believed, in analogy with experiments under the air-pump, that no animal could live in so low a pressure. I have myself, as I have already noticed, seen the barometer sink on the Chimborazo to 13 French inches 11·2 lines (14.850 English inches). Man, indeed, at such elevations, if wearied by muscular exertion, finds himself in a state of very painful exhaustion; but the Condor seems to perform the functions of respiration with equal facility under pressures of 30 and 13 English inches. It is apparently of all living creatures on our planet the one which can remove at pleasure to the greatest distance from the surface of the earth; I say at pleasure, for minute insects and siliceous-shelled infusoria are carried by the ascending current to possibly still greater elevations. The Condor probably flies higher than the altitude found as above by computation. I remember on the Cotopaxi, in the pumice plain of Suniguaicu, 13578 (14470 English) feet above the sea, to have seen the bird soaring at a height at which he appeared only as a small black speck. What is the smallest angle under which feebly illuminated objects can be discerned? Their form, (linear extension) has a great influence on the minimum of this angle. The transparency of the mountain atmosphere at the equator is such that, in the province of Quito, as I have elsewhere noticed, the white mantle or Poncho of a horseman was distinguished with the naked eye at a horizontal distance of 84132 (89665 English) feet; therefore under a visual angle of 13 seconds. It was my friend Bonpland, whom, from the pleasant country seat of the Marques de Selvalegre, we saw moving along the face of a black precipice on the Volcano of Pichincha. Lightning conductors, being long thin objects, are seen, as has already been remarked by Arago, from the greatest distances, and under the smallest angles.

The accounts of the habits of the Condor in the mountainous districts of Quito and Peru, given by me in a monograph on this powerful bird, have been confirmed by a later traveller, Gay, who has explored the whole of Chili, and has described that country in an excellent work entitled Historia fisica y politica de Chile. The Condor, which, like the Lamas, Vicunas, Alpacas, and Guanacos, does not extend beyond the equator into New Granada, is found as far south as the Straits of Magellan. In Chili, as in the mountain plains of Quito, the Condors, which at other times live either solitarily or in pairs, assemble in flocks to attack lambs and calves, or to carry off young Guanacos (Guanacillos). The ravages annually committed among the herds of sheep, goats, and cattle, as well as among the wild Vicunas, Alpacas, and Guanacos of the Andes, are very considerable. The inhabitants of Chili assert that, in captivity, 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 assembly of these birds in such cases taking flight on the appearance of a single king-vulture, who yet is no larger than the Gallinazos. No combat ever takes place; but the Gallinazos (the two species of which, Cathartes urubu and C. aura, have been confounded with each other by an unfortunately fluctuating nomenclature) appear to be terrified by the sudden appearance and courageous demeanour of the richly coloured Sarcoramphus papa. As the ancient Egyptians protected the bird which rendered them similar services towards the purification of their atmosphere, so in Peru the careless or wanton killing of the Gallinazos is punished with a fine, which in some towns amounts, according to Gay, to 300 piastres for each bird. It is a remarkable circumstance, stated so long ago as by Don Felix de Azara, that these species of vultures, if taken young and reared, will so accustom themselves to the person who feeds them, that they will follow him on a journey for many miles, flying after the waggon in which he travels over the Pampas.