In the garden at Valparaiso, where so many condors were kept alive, I observed that all the hens had the iris of their eyes bright red, but the cocks yellowish brown. In a young bird, whose back was brown, and ruff not white, (but which must have been at least nearly a year old, as it was then the spring) I observed that the eye was dark brown: upon examination after death, this proved to be a female, and therefore I suppose the colour of the iris changes at the same time with the plumage. 1. CATHARTES ATRATUS. _Rich. and Swain._ Cathartes urubu, _D’Orbigny._ Voy. Ois. Vultur atratus, _Bartram_, p. 287. —— jota, _Jardine’s_ Wilson, vol. iii. p. 236. ——, _Bonaparte’s_ List, p. 1. Gallinazo or Cuervo of the Spanish inhabitants of America; and Black Vulture or Carrion Crow of the English of that continent. These birds, I believe, are never found further south, than the neighbourhood of the Rio Negro, in latitude 41°: I never saw one in southern Patagonia, or in Tierra del Fuego. They appear to prefer damp places, especially the vicinity of rivers; and thus, although abundant both at the Rio Negro and Colorado, they are not found on the intermediate plains. Azara[4] states, that there existed a tradition in his time, that on the first arrival of the Spaniards in the Plata, these birds were not found in the neighbourhood of Monte Video, but that they subsequently followed the inhabitants from more northern districts. M. Al. D’Orbigny, in reference to this statement, observes that these vultures, although common on the northern bank of the Plata, and likewise on the rivers south of it, are not found in the neighbourhood of Buenos Ayres, where the immense slaughtering establishments are attended by infinite numbers of Polybori and gulls. M. D’Orbigny supposes that their absence is owing to the scarcity of trees and bushes in the Pampas; but this view, I think, will hardly hold good, inasmuch as the country near Bahia Blanca, where the Gallinazo (together with the carrion-feeding gull) is common, is as bare, if not more so, than the plains near Buenos Ayres. I have never seen the Gallinazo in Chile; and Molina, who was aware of the difference between the _C. atratus_ and _C. aura_, has not noticed it; yet, on the opposite side of the Cordillera, near Mendoza, it is common. They do not occur in Chiloe, or on the west coast of the continent south of that island. In Wilson’s Ornithology it is said that “the carrion crow (as this bird is called in the United States) is seldom found on the Atlantic to the northward of Newbern, lat. 35° North Carolina.” But in Richardson’s “Fauna Boreali-Americana,” it is mentioned, on the authority of Mr. David Douglas, that on the Pacific side of the continent, it is common on the marshy islands of the Columbia, and in the neighbourhood of Lewis’s and Clark’s rivers (45°–47° N.) It has, therefore, a wider range in the northern than in the southern half of the continent.