The faculties of birds / [Anon].

  • James Rennie
Date:
1847
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The faculties of birds / [Anon]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    40/392 page 18
    there was seen high in the zenith a number of minute objects descending' in spiral circles, and increasing in visible magnitude at every revolution. These were soon discovered to be a flight of vultures, which must have observed from a height, viewless to the human eye, the dropping of the animal immediately marked out for prey *. Dr. J ames Johnson mentions a fact illustrative of the same view. During the north-east monsoon, when the wind blew steadily in one point for months in succession, he observed a concourse of birds of prey from every point of the horizon hastening to a corpse that was floating down the river Ganges; and he accounts for their thus congregating, and appearing suddenly from immense distances, to their soaring high in the air for the purpose of looking out for food t. It is said in St. Matthew, as the received translation gives it, that “where the carcass is, there will the eagles be gathered together |and in Job it is said, “ where the slain is, there is she.” Now it is well known that the eagle does not feed on carrion, and it has been proved by experiment that it will not touch it unless pressed by hunger §. Yet Professor Paxton contends with St. Jerome that the eagle is certainly meant in the text, and quotes after Bochart || the Arabian historian Damir, who asserts that the eagle can discover a carcass at the distance of four hun¬ dred parasangs, with this singularity that if he find part of it have been previously eaten by the osprey he will not touch the leavings of his inferior^. This circumstance, as it appears to us, makes rather against than for Dr. Paxton’s opinion, supposing the authority of Damir to be good. In consequence of # Travels in Africa. f Med. Chir. Review, Dec. 1828. X Matth. xxiv. 28, and Luke xvii. 37. § Selby, lllustr. i. || Hieroz, ii. 175. lllustr. ii. 9.
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3