32 THE RUNAWAY.
acquainted, received me with all the generous kindness of a Louisiana
planter. Ere an hour had elapsed, the Runaway and his family were looked
upon as his own. He afterwards repurchased them from their owners,
and treated them with his former kindness ; so that they were rendered as
happy as slaves generally are in that country, and continued to cherish
that attachment to each other which had led to their adventures. Since
this event happened, it has, I have been informed, become illegal to separate
slave families without their consent.
( 3 3 )
T H E B L A C K V U L T U R E O R C A R R I O N C R O W .
CATHARTES JOTA, BONAP.
P L A T E C V I . MALE AND FEMALE.
THE habits of this species are so intimately connected with those of
the Turkey Buzzard (Cathartes Aura), that I cannot do better than devote
this article to the description of both. And here, I beg leave to request
of you, reader, that you allow me to present you with a copy of a
paper which I published several years ago on the subject, and which was
read, in my presence, to a numerous assemblage of the members of the
Wernerian Natural History Society of Edinburgh, by my friend Mr
NEILL, the Secretary of that Society. It is scarcely necessary for me to
apologise for introducing here the observations which I then narrated,
more especially as they referred principally to an interesting subject of
discussion, which has been since resumed. They are as follows :—
" As soon as, like me, you shall have seen the Turkey Buzzard follow,
with arduous closeness of investigation, the skirts of the forests, the
meanders of creeks and rivers, sweeping over the whole of extensive
plains, glancing his quick eye in all directions, with as much intentness
as ever did the noblest of Falcons, to discover where below him lies the
suitable prey; when, like me, you have repeatedly seen that bird pass
over objects calculated to glut his voracious appetite, unnoticed, because
unseen; and when you have also observed the greedy Vulture, propelled
by hunger, if not famine, moving like the wind suddenly round his
course, as the carrion attracts his eye ; then will you abandon the deeplyrooted
notion, that this bird possesses the faculty of discovering, by his
sense of smell, his prey at an immense distance.
This power of smelling so acutely I adopted as a fact from my youth.
I had read of this when a child ; and many of the theorists, to whom I
subsequently spoke of it, repeated the same with enthusiasm, the more
particularly as they considered it an extraordinary gift of nature. But
I had already observed, that nature, although wonderfully bountiful, had
not granted more to any one individual than was necessary, and that no
one was possessed of any two of the senses in a very high state of perfection
; that if it had a good scent, it needed not so much acuteness of
VOL. II. c