144 EGYPTIAN BIRDS 



small pool was one solid mass of dead fry, none 

 longer than an inch and a half. The water had 

 been all over the island, but when I was there in 

 April it had gone down, and this mass of im- 

 prisoned little fish had died as the water gradually 

 dried up. How long they may have been dead I 

 do not know, but the level mass of them was so 

 untouched that it was clear no gull or heron or 

 stork had been there, and yet the district was full of 

 these birds ; but I presume living food being in 

 such profusion round them, they cared not to 

 trouble about dead. The pool looked like a large 

 basin of the most wonderfully silvery whitebait. 



Up the Nile when flocks of Storks are seen 

 they are always either heading due north in spring, 

 or due south in autumn. Every now and again 

 they indulge, however, sometimes for hours together, 

 in curious aerial exercises high up in mid-air over 

 one spot — why this is I do not know. This, as is 

 the case with so many of birds' habits, is all that 

 can be done — note the fact. Conclusions drawn 

 from these facts are vain, as too often man reads 

 into these birds' actions the reasons that would 

 occur in his life ; and the life of a bird is not as that 

 of a man, and the sooner man throws over all such 

 ideas that he can tell anything of the causes of 



