3-021-001 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

"Purification" (the Griffon Vulture): from "The Bird", by J. Michelet, 1868. Engraving of an illustration from the '...English translation...published by Messrs. T. Nelson and Sons...The book...is not a regular scientific treatise, and follows no proper system of ornithological classification...[The job of] the scavenger class of birds - the vulture, the ibis, the crow, and others...is to consume the offal and carrion that would otherwise breed a plague in the hot climates of Egypt and South America. The author names this part of his subject "Purification," and speaks of it as a grand sacrament of Nature, specially instituted for the conversion of the unclean into the pure, of dead organic matter into organic life and health. This remark is unquestionably founded in truth, though expressed in phrases too rhetorical for the announcement of a natural law. We have borrowed...an engraving of the vulture, the "Agent of Purification". It is a fair specimen of the illustrations designed by Giacomelli, which adorn this beautiful volume...Under the title "Death" an account is given of the Raptores, or Birds of Prey...They are "murderers," and creatures of a low moral and intellectual capacity, "with a flattened skull and small brain".' From "Illustrated London News", 1868.