But you remember the taste of more delicious food; I
have often regaled you with the flesh of man." "Tell us," said the young
vultures, "where man may be found, and how he may be known; his flesh is
surely the natural food of a vulture. Why have you never brought a man
in your talons to the nest?" "He is too bulky," said the mother; "when
we find a man, we can only tear away his flesh, and leave his bones upon
the ground." "Since man is so big," said the young ones, "how do you
kill him? You are afraid of the wolf and of the bear, by what power are
vultures superior to man? is man more defenceless than a sheep?" "We
have not the strength of man," returned the mother, "and I am sometimes
in doubt whether we have the subtilty; and the vultures would seldom
feast upon his flesh, had not nature, that devoted him to our uses,
infused into him a strange ferocity, which I have never observed in any
other being that feeds upon the earth. Two herds of men will often meet
and shake the earth with noise, and fill the air with fire. When you
hear noise and see fire, with flashes along the ground, hasten to the
place with your swiftest wing, for men are surely destroying one
another; you will then find the ground smoking with blood, and covered
with carcasses, of which many are dismembered and mangled for the
convenience of the vulture.
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