There is among the mountains a natural funnel-shaped excavation, sixty feet in depth, and about eighty feet in diameter at the top. The Indians place, on the edge of the pit, the putrid body of a mule, so balanced that it will easily fall over. In a short time it is discovered by numbers of condors, which, darting down, greedily attack it. Tugging and pulling at the flesh, they soon draw it over the edge, when it falls to the bottom of the pit. Not to be disappointed of their prey, they hold tightly to the body, and descend with it. Here, having gorged themselves, they are unable to rise again to the mouth of the pit, and are speedily killed with stones and sticks by the natives who collect round it, or are drawn captive to the surface. Dr Tschudi, in his Travels, mentions having seen twenty-eight birds at one time thus destroyed. They are caught in a similar manner in other places, and brought down to the coast, where they are sold for a few dollars; and often thus find their way to Europe. It was long an unsettled point whether the condor discovers the dead animals on which it feeds by the power of sight or of scent; but Darwin, by several experiments, has settled the question in favour of the bird's keenness of vision. A number of condors were kept captive in a garden, secured by ropes. Wrapping up a piece of meat in white paper, and holding it in his hand, he walked up and down in front of the birds; but they took no notice of it. He then threw it down in front of an old male bird; but it was still disregarded. He then pushed it with a stick till it touched the condor's beak, when the paper was torn off with fury, and every bird in the row began struggling and flapping its wings to reach the food. Under the same circumstances, no dog would have been deceived. The condor is said formerly to have been worshipped in Peru. Perhaps the Peruvians, seeing it descend through the air from beyond their sight, supposed it a celestial messenger from the sun, which they worshipped. If so, their descendants treat it in a very different way to what they must then have done. A condor ordinarily measures nine feet from tip to tip of the wings, and slightly over four feet from beak to tail. PART THREE, CHAPTER NINE. THE VEGETABLE PRODUCTIONS OF THE CORDILLERAS. CHINCHONA OR PERUVIAN BARK. The chinchona (it is erroneously spelt cinchona) tree constitutes the type of a natural order (Chinchonaceae), which also includes ipecacuanhas and coffees.