a great distance.

The flight of the Turkey Vulture is truly beautiful, and no landscape
with its patches of green woods and grassy fields, is perfect without
its dignified figure high in the air, moving round in circles, steady,
graceful and easy, and apparently without effort. "It sails," says
Dr. Brewer, "with a steady, even motion, with wings just above the
horizontal position, with their tips slightly raised, rises from the
ground with a single bound, gives a few flaps of the wings, and then
proceeds with its peculiar soaring flight, rising very high in the
air."

The Vulture pictured in the accompanying plate was obtained between
the Brazos river and Matagorda bay. With it was found the Black
Vulture, both nesting upon the ground. As the nearest trees were
thirty or forty miles distant these Vultures were always found in this
situation. The birds selected an open spot beneath a heavy growth of
bushes, placing the eggs upon the bare ground. The old bird when
approached would not attempt to leave the nest, and in the case of the
young bird in the plate, the female to protect it from harm, promptly
disgorged the putrid contents of her stomach, which was so offensive
that the intruder had to close his nostrils with one hand while he
reached for the young bird with the other.

The Turkey Vulture is a very silent bird, only uttering a hiss of
defiance or warning to its neighbors when feeding, or a low gutteral
croak of alarm when flying low overhead.

The services of the Vultures as scavengers in removing offal render
them valuable, and almost a necessity in southern cities. If an animal
is killed and left exposed to view, the bird is sure to find out the
spot in a very short time, and to make its appearance as if called by
some magic spell from the empty air.

"Never stoops the soaring Vulture
On his quarry in the desert,
On the sick or wounded bison,
But another Vulture, watching,
From his high aerial lookout,
Sees the downward plunge and follows;
And a third pursues the second,
Coming from the invisible ether,
First a speck, and then a Vulture,
Till the air is dark with pinions."

TO A WATER-FOWL.

Whither, 'midst falling dew
While glow the heavens with the last steps of day,
Far through their rosy depths dost thou pursue
Thy solitary way?

Vainly the fowler's eye
Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong,
As, dar