These
birds frequent the whole Pampas to the foot of the Cordillera, but
I never saw or heard of one in Chile: in Peru they are preserved as
scavengers. These vultures certainly may be called gregarious, for
they seem to have pleasure in society, and are not solely brought
together by the attraction of a common prey. On a fine day a flock
may often be observed at a great height, each bird wheeling round
and round without closing its wings, in the most graceful
evolutions. This is clearly performed for the mere pleasure of the
exercise, or perhaps is connected with their matrimonial alliances.
I have now mentioned all the carrion-feeders, excepting the condor,
an account of which will be more appropriately introduced when we
visit a country more congenial to its habits than the plains of La
Plata.
In a broad band of sand-hillocks which separate the Laguna del
Potrero from the shores of the Plata, at the distance of a few
miles from Maldonado, I found a group of those vitrified, siliceous
tubes, which are formed by lightning entering loose sand. These
tubes resemble in every particular those from Drigg in Cumberland,
described in the "Geological Transactions.
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