“Notwithstanding it forms so common a feature in our landscapes, being seen every day and every where, on the mountain as well as in the plain, in the city as well as in the country, the Aura is not common to the West Indies. It exists in Cuba and Trinidad, but is unknown in Hayti, and in all the intermediate islands of the Caribbean chain. We are no doubt indebted for it to an accidental colony blown over to us from Cuba, and Cuba herself owes it to some stray visitants from the neighbouring continent of Florida. Some similar fortuity imparted to us in common with Cuba, from America, its naturalized hive-bee, which is said to have been, at comparatively a late period, an introduction into St. Domingo. “Those who ascribe the power which the Vulture possesses of discerning from a distance its carrion food, to the sense of seeing or to the sense of smelling, _exclusively_, appear to me to be both in error. It is the two senses, exerted sometimes singly, but generally unitedly, which give the facility which it possesses of tracing its appropriate food from far distances. * * * * I shall relate one or two occurrences, which seem to me to be instances in which the sense of seeing and the sense of smelling were sometimes separately and sometimes unitedly exerted by the Vulture in its quest for food. “A poor German immigrant who lived alone in a detached 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 insupportable stench discovered in the corrupted soup-meat.