Note 72 — IDEAS FOR A PHYSIOGNOMY OF PLANTS.

237p. 210—“The Condor, that giant among vultures.”

I have elsewhere^[JN] given the natural history of the Condor, which before my travels had been variously misstated. The name is properly Cuntur in the Inca language; Mañque among the Araucanes in Chili; Sarcoramphus Condor according to Duméril. I sketched the head of this bird from life, of the natural size, and had my drawing engraved. Next to the Condor, the Lämmergeier of Switzerland, and the Falco destructor (Daud.), probably Linnæus’ Falco Harpyia, are the largest of all flying birds.

The region which may be regarded as the common resort of the Condor, begins at the elevation of Mount Etna. It embraces atmospheric strata which are from 10,000 to 19,000 feet above the level of the sea. Humming birds also, which in their summer flights advance as far as 61° north lat. on the western coast of America, and are on the other hand found in the Archipelago of the Tierra del Fuego, were seen by Von Tschudi in Puna at an elevation of 14,600 feet.^[JO] There is a pleasure in comparing the largest and the smallest of the feathered inhabitants of the air. The largest among the Condors found in the Cordilleras, near Quito, measure nearly 15 feet across the expanded wings, and the smaller ones 8½ feet. This size, and the visual angle at which the birds are seen vertically above one’s head, afford an idea of the enormous height to which the Condor soars in a clear sky. A visual angle of four minutes, for instance, would give a vertical elevation of 7330 feet. The cavern (Mackay) of Antisana, opposite the mountain of Chussulongo, and where we measured the birds soaring over the chain of the Andes, lies at an elevation of nearly 16,000 feet above the surface of the Pacific; the absolute height which the Condor reached must therefore be 23,273 feet, a height at which the barometer scarcely stands at 12·7 inches; but which, however, does not exceed that of the loftiest summit of the Himalaya. It is a remarkable physiological phenomenon that the same bird, which wheels for hours together through these highly rarefied regions, should be able suddenly, as for instance on the western declivity of the volcano of Pichincha, to descend to 238the sea-shore, and thus in the course of a few hours traverse, as it were, all climates. At heights of 23,000 feet and upwards the membranous air-sacs of the Condor must undergo a remarkable degree of inflation after being filled in lower regions of the atmosphere.

Ulloa, more than a hundred years ago, expressed his astonishment that the Vulture of the Andes could soar at heights where the pressure of the atmosphere was less than fifteen inches.^[JP] An opinion was at that time entertained, from the analogy of experiments made with the air-pump, that no animal could exist under this slight amount of atmospheric pressure. I have myself, as has already been mentioned, seen the barometer fall to 14·85 inches on the Chimborazo; and my friend, M. Gay-Lussac, breathed for a quarter of an hour an atmosphere in which the pressure was only 12·9 inches. It must be admitted that man, when wearied by muscular exertion, finds himself in a state of painful exhaustion at such elevations; but in the Condor, the respiratory process seems to be performed with equal facility under a pressure of 30 or of 13 inches. This bird probably raises itself voluntarily to a greater height from the surface of our earth than any other living creature. I use the expression “voluntarily,” since small insects and siliceous-shelled infusoria are frequently borne to greater elevations by a rising current of air. It is probable that the Condor flies even higher than the above calculations would appear to show. I remember observing near the Cotopaxi, in the pumice plain of Suniguaicu, at an elevation of 14,471 feet above the level of the sea, this bird soaring at such a height above my head that it appeared like a black speck. But what is the smallest angle under which faintly illumined objects can be distinguished? Their form (linear extension) exercises a great influence on the minimum of this angle. The transparency of the mountain air is so great under the equator, that in the province of Quito, as I have elsewhere stated, the white cloak (poncho) of a horseman may be distinguished with the naked eye at a horizontal distance of 89,664 feet, and therefore under an angle of thirteen seconds. It was my friend Bonpland whom we observed, from the pleasant country-seat of the Marques de Selvalegre, 239moving along a black rocky precipice on the volcano of Pichincha. Lightning conductors, being thin elongated objects, are visible, as Arago has observed, from the greatest distances and under the smallest angles.

The account I have given in my Monograph of the Condor (Zoologie, pp. 26–45) of the habits of this powerful bird in the mountain districts of Quito and Peru has been confirmed by a more recent traveller, Gay, who has explored the whole of Chili, and described it in his admirable work, Historia fisica y politica de Chile. This bird which, singularly enough, like the Lamas, Vicuñas, Alpacas and Guanacos, is not found beyond the equator in New Granada, penetrates as far south as the Straits of Magellan. In Chili, as in the elevated plateaux of Quito, the Condors, which usually live in pairs, or even alone, congregate in flocks for the purpose of attacking lambs and calves, or seizing on young Guanacos (Guanacillos). The havoc annually committed by the Condor among the herds of sheep, goats and cattle, as well as among the wild vicuñas, alpacas and guanacos of the chain of the Andes is very considerable. The Chilians assert that this bird when in captivity can endure hunger for forty days; when in a free state, however, its voracity is excessive, and it then, like the vulture, feeds by preference on carrion.

The mode of catching these birds, by an inclosure of palisades such as I have already described, is as successful in Chili as in Peru, for the bird after being rendered heavy from excess of food is obliged to run a short distance with half-extended wings before it can take flight. A dead ox which is already in an incipient state of decomposition, is strongly inclosed with palisades, within which narrow space the Condors throng together; being unable, as already observed, to fly on account of the excess of food which they have devoured, and impeded in their run by the palisades, these birds are either killed by the natives with clubs, or are caught alive by the lasso. The Condor was represented as a symbol of strength on the coinage of Chili immediately after the first declaration of political independence.^[JQ]

The different species of Gallinazos, which are much more considerable in point of numbers than the Condors, are also 240far more useful than the latter in the great economy of Nature for destroying and removing animal substances that are becoming decomposed, and thus purifying the atmosphere in the neighbourhood of human dwellings. In tropical America, I have sometimes seen seventy or eighty of these creatures collected round a dead ox; and I am able, as an eye-witness, to confirm the fact that has of late erroneously been called in question by ornithologists, that the appearance of one single king-vulture (who is not larger than the Gallinazos) is sufficient to put a whole assemblage of these birds to flight. No contest ever takes place; but the Gallinazos (two species of which, (Cathartes urubu and C. aura,) have been confounded together by an unfortunately fluctuating nomenclature) are intimidated by the sudden appearance and the courageous demeanour of the richly coloured “Sarcoramphus Papa.” As the ancient Egyptians protected the Percnopteri, which purified the atmosphere, so also the wanton destruction of Gallinazos is punished in Peru by a fine (multa) which, according to Gay, amounts in some cities to 300 piastres for every bird. It is a remarkable fact, that this species of vulture, as was already testified by Don Felix de Azara, if trained early, will so accustom themselves to the person who has reared them, that they will follow him on a journey for many miles, flying after his carriage across the Pampa.