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BY PROFESSOR FROST.
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Sarcoramphus Gryphus, male.
THE CONDOR. (Sarcoramphus Gryphus.)
This bird is one of the largest of the vultures. The early Spanish writers on America gave the most exaggerated accounts of its size and strength; and its true history and dimensions have been only recently ascertained. The bird was compared with the Roc of the Arabian romance writers. Acosta says that the bird called Condor is able singly to eviscerate and devour a whole sheep or a calf. Garcilaso de la Vega makes them measure 16 feet from tip to tip of the extended wings; he says their beaks are sufficiently strong to perforate and tear off a bull’s hide, and to rip out its entrails; and that a single Condor “will set upon and slay boys of ten or twelve years;” which last exaggeration, though now exploded, has found its way into our common school geographies.
Investigation has shown that the Condor is merely a large, perhaps not the largest of the vultures. “The Condor,” writes Mr. Bennett, “forms the type of a genus, a second species of which is the Vultur papa of Linnæus, the king of the vultures of British writers. They are both peculiar to the New World, but approach in their most essential characters very closely to the vultures of the Old Continent, differing from the latter principally in the large, fleshy, or rather cartilaginous, caruncle which surmounts their beaks, in the large size of their oval and longitudinal nostrils, placed almost at the very extremity of the cere; and in the comparative length of their quill feathers, the third being the longest of the series. The most important of these differences, the size and position of their nostrils, appears to be well calculated to add to the already highly powerful sense of smell possessed by the typical vulture, and for which the birds have been almost proverbially celebrated from the earliest ages. There is also a third species, the Californian vulture, two noble specimens of which, the only pair in Europe, are preserved in the London Zoological Society’s Museum, rivaling the Condor in bulk, and agreeing in every respect with the generic characters of the group, except in the existence of the caruncle, of which they are entirely destitute.
“In size the Condor is little, if at all, superior to the Bearded Griffin, the Lämmergeyer of the Alps, with which Buffon was disposed conjecturally to confound it, but to which it bears at most but a distant relation. The greatest authentic measurement scarcely carries the extent of its wings beyond fourteen feet, and it appears rarely to attain so gigantic a size. M. Humboldt met with none that exceeded nine feet, and was assured by many credible inhabitants of the province of Quito that they had never shot any that measured more than eleven. The length of a male specimen somewhat less than nine feet in expanse was three feet three inches from the tip of the beak to the extremity of the tail; and its height, when perching with the neck partly withdrawn, two feet eight inches. Its beak was two inches and three quarters in length, and an inch and a quarter in depth when closed.
“The beak of the Condor is straight at the base, but the upper mandible becomes arched toward the point, and terminates in a strong and well curved hook. The basal half is of an ash brown, and the remaining portion, toward the point, is nearly white. The head and neck are bare of feathers, and covered with hard, wrinkled, dusky reddish skin, on which are scattered some short brown or blackish hairs. On the top of the head, which is much flattened above, and extending some distance along the beak, is attached an oblong firm caruncle or comb, covered by a continuation of the skin which invests the head. This organ is peculiar to the male. It is connected to the beak only in its anterior part, and is separated from it at the base in such a manner as to allow a free passage of the air to the large oval nostrils, which are situated beneath it at that part. Beyond the eyes, which are somewhat elongated, and not sunk beneath the general surface of the head, the skin of the neck is, as it were, gathered into a series of descending folds, extending obliquely from the back of the head over the temples, to the under side of the neck, and there connected anteriorly with a lax membrane or wattle, capable of being dilated at pleasure, like that of the common turkey. The neck is marked by numerous deep parallel folds, produced by the habit of retracting the head, in which the bird indulges when at rest. In this position scarcely any part of the neck is visible.