"Judge of my feelings when I plainly saw that the vulture, which could not discover through its extraordinary sense of smell that no flesh, either fresh or putrid, existed about that skin, could at a glance see a snake scarcely as large as a man's finger, alive, and destitute of odor, hundreds of yards distant. I concluded that, at all events, his ocular powers were much better than his sense of smell. "_Second Experiment._--I had a large dead hog hauled some distance from the house and put into a ravine, about twenty feet deeper than the surface of the earth around it, narrow and winding much, filled with briars and high cane. In this I made the negroes conceal the hog, by binding cane over it, until I thought it would puzzle either buzzards, carrion-crows, or any other birds to see it, and left it for two days. This was early in the month of July, when, in this latitude, a body becomes putrid and extremely fetid in a short time. I saw from time to time many vultures, in search of food, sail over the field and ravine in all directions, but none discovered the carcass, although during this time several dogs had visited it and fed plentifully on it. I tried to go near it, but the smell was so insufferable when within thirty yards of it that I abandoned it, and the remnants were entirely destroyed at last through natural decay. "I then took a young pig, put a knife through its neck, and made it bleed on the earth and grass about the same, and, having covered it closely with leaves, also watched the result. The vultures saw the fresh blood, alighted about it, followed it down into the ravine, discovered by the blood of the pig, and devoured it, when yet quite fresh, within my sight." He pursues the subject at some length, recounting other experiments; but these, were they not even given on the authority of Audubon--_clarum et venerabile nomen_--seem to me to be conclusive. _22 Irving place, New York_ FOOTNOTE: [1] When I said "Wilson" above I find I was slightly mistaken. I remembered reading it long ago in the first edition I possessed of this writer's works--the little four-volume set edited by Prof. Jameson for "Constable's Miscellany," Edinburgh, 1831, and taking down the book now, which I have not opened for years, I find the passages in question (Vol. iv, pp. 245 _et seq._) form part of an appendix drawn from Richardson and Swainson's "Northern Zoology," and that the real authority is Audubon. [Illustration: FROM COL. CHI. ACAD. SCIENCES. HOARY BAT. 1/2 Life-size. COPYRIGHT 1899, NATURE STUDY PUB. CO., CHICAGO.] THE HOARY BAT. C. C. M.