NOTE-BOOK OF A NATURALIST. 23 



tas de houe, and left tliem to scramble for the few bodies 

 open to them. 



If such tales be true, happy must the struggling soul 

 have been that worked its way into the egg of a stork, 

 that personification of all the virtues. Gratitude, tem- 

 perance, chastity, piety, — these were a few of the qualities 

 attributed to the bird by the ancients. Welcome every- 

 where, and bearing a charmed life, it was and is hailed 

 as the harbinger of spring and the destroyer of evil 

 things. Even the Dutchman grows animated when he 

 sees the stork return to the well-known nest, and ex- 

 presses his pleasure at beholding the snowy wader stalk 

 about his polders by a reduplication of puffs from his 

 eternal pipe. Nay, he has been known on such an 

 occasion to withdraw the reeking tube from his lips for 

 a moment, and ask the frogs how they liked their new 

 king? 



The disappearance of the storks in the winter, and 

 their reappearance in the spring, gave rise to the same 

 tales of brumal hybernation as were long rife about the 

 swallows; and stories were told of a concatenation of 

 storks, joined head and tail together, having been fished 

 out of the water. The Lake of Como, if we recollect 

 right, was one of the hybemacula out of which they were 

 declared to have been taken, apparently dead, but revived 

 by the fishermen, who restored animation by placing 

 them in a warm bath. And yet Pliny had no doubt 

 about their migration, and as little that they arrived 

 from a great distance, though he says that in his time it 

 was not known from what country they came or whither 

 they retired. Old Belon, however, well knew that 

 Africa was the locality of their winter quarters ; and he 

 gives evidence of their having been seen whitening the 

 plains of Eg3rpt in September and October. The same 

 excellent ornithologist — blessings on him for a good 

 observer — beheld a large flock of them in the act of 



