The Natural History of Pliny, Volume 2 (of 6)

Chapter 283: CHAP. 7. (6.)—THE VULTURE.

Open in WeRead

Explore more books like this:

About This Book

The volume assembles an encyclopedic survey of the known world and its living inhabitants, moving from detailed regional geography and descriptions of seas, rivers, islands, and peoples to extended treatments of humanity, its generation, anatomy, and the origins and inventions of arts. Subsequent books catalog terrestrial animals—their habits, capture, and uses—followed by comprehensive observations on fish and marine creatures, their sizes and behaviors. Accounts mix naturalistic description, reported marvels, medicinal uses derived from animals, and travel and secondhand reports, organized as topical chapters intended as a practical compendium of natural and human phenomena.

CHAP. 7. (6.)—THE VULTURE.

Of the vultures, the black ones 2912 are the strongest. No person has yet found a vulture’s nest: hence it is that there are some who have thought, though erroneously, that these birds come from the opposite hemisphere.2913 The fact is, that they build their nest upon the very highest rocks; their young ones, indeed, are often to be seen, being generally two in number. Umbricius, the most skilful among the aruspices of our time, says that the vulture lays thirteen eggs,2914 and that with one of these eggs 2915 it purifies the others and its nest, and then throws it away: he states also that they hover about for three 2916 days, over the spot where carcases are about to be found.