Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 9, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 November 1883 — The Scent of the Buzzard. [ARTICLE]

The Scent of the Buzzard.

While digging sweet potatoes I noticed a very luxurious growth of the vines covering a small mound in the field, and inquiry revealed the fact that a horse and cow had been buried there some years before. Just then nothing impressed me in that connection save the immensity of the potatoes which we found overlying these two graves, but in the afternoon and during the following day, buzzards shadowed the farm by scores, seeming to obey from all quarters of the heavens a mysterious summons to convocation. ■ I soon perceived the sweet potato-field was the “radiant point” of each speeding shadow. Buzzard after buzzard I traced as they appeared in various portions of the sky with half-folded wings, reminding me of mute terial hounds" “coming down the scent,” their course as swift, silent, and nndeviating as an arrow’s. It was a strangely interesting spectacle to behold them swoop within a few feet of the horse-hades, and rise flaps, indicative of disappointment, then return to deliberately “beat” and “quarter” the ground, serially speaking, with all the tact and persevering sagacity of then - canine compeers; in fact, the performance was suggestive of a fox-hunt? in which Reynard’s place was represented by the dead bodies, “earthed” in this case, however, for other than Reynard reasons. One of the vultures in particular showed an extreme faith in the guidance of its smelling powers by alighting without demur on a fence half a dozen paces from the center of attraction, where, after some time of manifest uneasiness and uncouth posture, it was joined by a few of its more dubious companions. This visitation of uncanny birds continued long after, though I never saw so many as at the first when the crop was plowed out, this disturbance probably releasing for a time the pent-up odors. I could detect no taint in the atmosphere of the place even while working in the freshly plowed ground, yet hundreds of buzzards 1 assembled from far and near, and with unerring accuracy pointed out the place of burial with overshadowing wings. In consequence of these observations the theory that the vulture family are enabled to-detect the existence of a dead body by scent, unassisted by any of the remaining senses, and this, too, at great distances, and when such carcass had lain deep under the ground for several years, was to, me satisfactorily proved.— American Nationalist.