“When, however, they are attacked before they have finished their filthy meal, they fight with great determination. ‘One day,’ says a traveller, who proceeded up the Nile, ‘as I was reading in my cabin, my attention was directed by the trackers to three large Vultures on the shore, not forty yards distant. Immediately afterwards two of them retired leisurely into the desert, and the other to a ridge of sand upon the top of a bank. I was quickly landed, and firing at the latter, he appeared to be hit, though not so severely as to prevent his flying about a mile up the stream, where he again settled. I now passed the ridge in search of his two companions, which had joined a party of four others, and were all sitting together on a sandhill at no great distance. Their wings were spread, their plumage ragged, and they looked bare and hungry as the desert around them. To approach unobserved was impossible. There was not even a mat-rush for shelter. They began to exchange looks, seeming to communicate their suspicions that all was not right, and then taking flight, one by one, the last had gone before I could fire with any fair chance of success. I had scarcely regained the bank in quest of the one I had fired at, when I heard a shot a little higher up, and at the same time saw a Vulture fall into the river, and come paddling down with open wings. But even the old Nile could not befriend her. A bearded and swarthy Arab appeared upon the bank and, running down to the water’s edge, stopped as if perplexed respecting his next step. The delay was momentary; with one and the same effort he threw his clothes upon the mud and himself into the stream, and reaching forward with alternate arms quickly overtook the wounded Bird. The latter was ready to receive him. Stretching forth his neck and opening his beak, he turned upon his pursuer, who by darting up the stream, eluded his attack. After repeated attempts, the Arab at length reached the end of the wing under water, and swimming gently forward on his side, pulled the bird, apparently exhausted, towards the shore; but the Vulture no sooner gained his feet than he furiously assailed his naked enemy, who, retreating with a loud yell, first in a straight line, then in a circle round the bird, still held the extreme end of the feathers, and warded off the strokes with its own pinion. The Vulture’s beak was frequently within a few inches of the Arabs ribs, and had he succeeded, he would doubtless have made short work of it. Yet the cry of the Arab was not altogether that of fear. There was a mixture of bitter playfulness and triumph, as one sometimes says, ‘You will—will you?’ It was a Turk who had shot the bird, and he was now watching the affair from the bank. I hastened towards him, and, neither understanding the other’s language, we commenced, after the usual salaam, a sort of telegraphic conversation; the bird and our guns being the chief topic. The Turk had taken mine to examine, and appeared