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cottage in this town, rose from his bed after a two days confinement by fever, to purchase in the market some fresh meat for a little soup. Before he could do more than prepare the several ingredients of herbs and roots, and put his meat in water for the preparation of his pottage, the paroxysm of fever had returned, and he laid himself on his bed exhausted. Two days elapsed in this state of helplessness and inanition, by which time the mass of meat and pot-herbs had putrefied. The stench becoming very perceptible in the neighbourhood, vulture after vulture, as they sailed past, were observed always to descend to the cottage of the German, and to sweep round, as if they had tracked some putrid carcase, but failed to find exactly where it was. This led the neighbours to apprehend that the poor man lay dead in his cottage, as no one had seen him for the two days last past. His door was broken open he was found in a state of helpless feebleness, but the room was most insufferably offensive from something putrefying, which could not immediately be found, for the fever having deprived the German of his wits, he had no recollection of his uncooked mess of meat and herbs. No one imagining that the kitchen pot could contain anything offensive, search was made everywhere but in the right place; at last the pot-lid was lifted, and the cause of the unsupportable stench discovered in the corrupted soup-meat.

"Here we have the sense of smelling directing the vultures, without any assistance from the sense of sight, and discovering unerringly the locality of the putrid animal matter, when even the neighbours were at fault in their patient search.

"Some few days succeeding this occurrence, after a night and morning of heavy rain, in which our streets had been inundated to the depth of a foot, and flood after flood had been sweeping to the river the drainage of the whole town, a piece of recent offal had been brought down from some of the yards where an animal had been slaughtered, and lodged in the street. A vulture beating about in search of food, dashed in a slanting direction from a considerable height, and just resting, without closing his wings, snatched up the fresh piece of flesh, and carried it off.

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Here was the sense of sight, unassisted by that of smelling, for the meat was too recent to communicate any taint to the morning air, and the vulture stooped to it from a very far distance.

"On another occasion, very near to the time when these facts attracted my notice, a dead rat had been thrown out, early in the morning into the street, having been caught in the previous night. Two vultures sailing over head in quest of a morning meal, descended at the same time, stooping to the dead rat, the one from the south the other from the north, and both seized the object of attraction at the same moment.

"Here, again, was the vision, unaided by the sensitiveness of the nostrils, directing two birds, with the same appetite, at the same moment, to the same object.

"For the next example, I am indebted to the records of a police-court. A clerk in the engineer department at Uppark Camp, brought before the magistrates of St Andrews, on the 20th January 1840, a man who had been beset in the night by the dogs of the barracks. The poultry-yard had been repeatedly robbed; and this person was supposed to have been prowling after the roost-fowls at the time the dogs rose upon him." This case had been heard, and the man committed to the House of Correction, when a complaint was presented against another man, whom Major G., also of the camp, had detected under similar circumstances, and lodged in the guard-house. Two days after his detection, "the Major observed some carrion-vultures hovering about a spot in the fields, and on sending to see what was the matter, a Kilmarnock cap, containing a dead fowl and some eggs, tied up in a pair of old trousers, was found very near to the spot where the prisoner was caught. This discovery by the aid of the vultures confirming the suspicion against the prisoner, he was condemned.

"The last instance that I shall relate is one in which the senses of hearing, seeing, and smelling, were all exercised, but not under the influence of the usual appetite for carrion food, but where the object was a living, though wounded animal.

"A person in the neighbourhood of the town having his pastures much trespassed on by vagrant hogs, resorted to his gun to rid himself of the annoyance. A pig which had been mortally wounded, and had run squeaking and trailing his blood through the grass, had not gone far before it fell in the agonies of death; at the moment the animal was perceived to be unable to rise, three vultures at the same instant descended upon it, attracted no doubt by the cries of the dying pig, and by the scent of its reeking blood, and while it was yet struggling for life, began to tear open its wounds and devour it.

"These several instances, I think, abundantly shew that all the senses are put in requisition by the John-Crow vulture in its quest for food."

From the facts thus presented by Mr Hill, we gather also, that the common opinion is erroneous, which attributes to the vulture a confinement of appetite to flesh in a state of decomposition. Flesh is his food, and that he does not pounce upon living prey like the falcons, is because his structure is not adapted for predatory warfare, and not because he refuses recent, and even living flesh, when in his power. If the JohnCrow vulture discovers a weakling new-born pig apart from the rest, he will descend, and seizing it with his beak will endeavour to drag it away: its cries of course bring the mother, but before she can come, the vulture gives it a severe nip across the back, which soon ensures the pig for his own maw. If a large hog be lying in a sick condition beneath a tree, the vulture will not hesitate to pick out its eyes, having first muted upon the body, that it may discover whether the animal be able to rise; the contact of the hot fæces arousing the hog if he be not too far gone. Cattle also he will attack under similar circumstances. One of my servants once saw a living dog partly devoured by one. The dogs of the negroes, half-starved at home, "bony, and gaunt, and grim," if they discover carrion, will gorge themselves until they can hardly stir, when they lie down and sleep with death-like intensity. A large dog thus gorged was sleeping under a tree, when a John-Crow descended upon him, perhaps attracted by the smell of the carrion which the dog had been devouring,

and began tearing the muscles of the thigh; it actually laid open a considerable space before the poor animal was aroused by the pain, and started up with a howl of agony. The wound was dressed, but the dog soon died.-The Birds of Jamaica, by Philip Henry Gorse, p, 1.

Series of Researches on the Geology of that part of the Alps lying between the Valais and Oisans. By M. FOURNET.

In 1841, M. Fournet published in the Annales de la Société d'Agriculture de Lyon, vol. iv., two memoirs on the Geology of that part of the Alps comprised between the Valais and Oisans. It is a grand and interesting subject of study; but M. Fournet had scarcely entered, so to speak, into the matter, his attention being hitherto directed to general considerations. He indicates four systems of elevation (soulevement) which have crossed each other in the Alps; 1st, The system of the Rhine; 2d, System of Mont Viso, running from NW., to SE.; 3d, System of Western Alps, lying from NNE. to SSW.; 4th, System of the Valais, directed from ENE. to WSW. The author then passed to a description of the rocks of plutonic origin, which are so numerous and varied in the Alps. He divides them into four groups; 1st, Micaceous rocks; 2d, Serpentine-talc, or Magnesian rocks; 3d, Porphyritic rocks; 4th, Pyroxenic rocks.

In this description of the rocks, he has entered upon interesting researches. We would mention more particularly those on the origin of agates (agathes) and zeolites, which he went to study at Oberstein in the Palatinate, in order to understand better the glandular rocks of the Alps.

M. Fournet has published a continuation of these two memoirs. He treats of a higher subject, namely, the study of the modifications produced on sedimentary rocks by the vicinity of rocks of igneous origin, He considers not only the metamorphisms which have taken place on a small scale; but also the modifications undergone by the whole sedimentary rocks of the Alps. For a long time the necessity has been felt of treating certain branches of Geology chemically,

particularly the metamorphism, and we are happy to find a work so carefully and accurately executed in this respect as that of M. Fournet.

De Saussure had likewise described a portion of the section from Martigny to St Maurice, and he did it with his usual admirable precision. He particularly attached himself to the study of petrosilex. But, in his time, the theory of metamorphism, at least such as it is now understood, had not been promulgated; consequently, M, Saussure's work and that of M. Fournet, regard the subject in two very different points of view.

The valley of the Rhone, between Martigny and St Maurice, in the Valais, intersects the prolongation of the axis of elevation of Mont Brevent, (valley of Chamonix); this axis is formed of rocks of crystallisation; it is parallel to the axis of Mont Blane, and it has upraised sedimentary rocks belonging for the most part to the jurassic formation. All these rocks have been traversed by a great number of veins which are the principal cause of the metamorphic effects. These veins appear upon the escarpments, sometimes under the form of transverse bands, sometimes under that of large lenticular masses parallel to the stratification; they are found in all the rocks placed between the slates of La Bathia (near Martigny) and the ravine of Saint Barthelemy, below the Dent du Midi. They are composed of quartz, pure felspars, or associated with quartz, or rather with some crystals of amphibole (?), protogine, and rocks allied to serpentine. These rocks are frequently ill defined and confusedly crystallised.

The rocks which are thus traversed with veins are the following, going in the direction from Martigny to St Maurice, that is to say, from the superior to the inferior.

At Bathia, we see slates slightly micaceous, with small veins of calcareous spar and milky quartz, thin grey slates passing into unctuous slates, crossed by veins of quartz and a felspar rock. These latter, by their contact, determine the formation of the petrosilex or palaiopetres of Saussure.

Further down, near Trient, are various kinds of gneiss, associated with petrosilex, or even mingled with them; and amongst the debris we find saccharoidal limestone with ido

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