(c). Outer toe reversible; tibia double the length of tarsus; body feathers without an after-shaft; plumage soft and fluffy; a facial disk.
III. Striges;[149] Owls.
The Falcones, or Hawks, include in their number more kinds of rapacious birds than the other two sub-orders. All the Vultures, the Caracaras, the Harriers, the Sparrow-Hawks, the Buzzards, Eagles, Kites, and Falcons, together numbering some four hundred different species, are classified as Falcones. Only one species of Osprey is known, which is found nearly all over the world; and about two hundred different kinds of Owls remain to represent the STRIGES.
ORDER ACCIPITRES.—SUB-ORDER FALCONES.
The first sub-order is divided into two families, the first to be noticed being the Vultures (Vulturidæ), which is again sub-divided into two sections, the Vultures of the Old World (Vulturinæ) and the Vultures of the New World (Sarcorhamphinæ).
THE FIRST SUB-FAMILY OF THE VULTURIDÆ.—THE OLD WORLD VULTURES (Vulturinæ).
These Vultures are neither to be recommended for their habits nor for their personal appearance. In fact, in both these respects they are rather repulsive birds, but useful withal in hot climates, where they act as scavengers, and clear away much putrid matter and decaying substances, which but for their intervention would prove most offensive. They are all inhabitants of tropical, or at least of warm, countries; and it is only on rare occasions that they wander into the North of Europe or occur in the British Islands. Both the Old and the New Worlds have their Vultures, but the naturalist has no difficulty in telling at a glance to which hemisphere the bird he is looking at belongs, for all the Vultures of the New World have a hole through their nose—or, in other words, want the wall of bone which divides one nostril from the other; in the Vultures of the Old World this bony wall is present so that the nostrils resemble those of other ordinary birds.
BILL OF EGYPTIAN VULTURE, TO SHOW FORM OF NOSTRIL. (After Keulemans.)