214 RAMBLES OF A NATURALIST. 



fellah will look on unmoved if you desire to shoot one. He 

 will have a worse opinion of you for shooting the Buff- 

 backed Herons, and he is right there, because the good 

 they do is so very palpable and obvious. 



With these preliminary observations, I will at once com- 

 mence with my first experience of Storks in Egypt, which 

 was about the end of March, and I dare say I shall not be 

 believed when I describe the prodigious migratory flights 

 which passed us. Armies of them would whiten the sand- 

 banks at early morning, which had evidently spent the 

 night there ; and by day they were to be seen sailing round 

 and round in countless myriads. It dazed the eye to look 

 at them. The air seemed scribbled with their white forms. 

 I am within bounds in saying that there seemed enough 

 Storks to stock every church, and every tower, and every 

 public office in the whole of civilized Europe. To those 

 who deem me romancing, let me say this : no one should 

 disbelieve a thing because he has not seen it. It must be 

 borne in mind that Egypt, or at least the Nile valley (they 

 are synonymous terms) is one of the greatest arteries, so to 

 speak, by which feathered migrants seek a northern clime. 

 Like man, they shun to cross the Great Sahara, where the 

 sands are trackless and the elixir of life — water — is wanting. 

 Hence their teeming thousands in the Nile valley. For the 

 same number, which in another and a fertile land would per- 

 haps be spread over 3,000 miles, are here compressed into a 

 space which on a average is only three miles broad. And this 

 will go on for ever. The channel which has been found so 

 often will be found again ; and unless their numbers are 

 kept down by disease, each succeeding year will probably 

 witness greater and greater droves, for few guns are em- 

 ployed against them, and they enjoy a comparative 

 immunity alike from the real sportsman, the naturalist, and 

 the pot-hunter. 



The first time we saw a drove was very late in the 



