NOTE-BOOK OF A NATURALIST. 31 



was once the silver Thames, sees the tempting bait of 

 * Live Fish/ hung out from many a sign, which too 

 often lies like a bulletin. Now the stork's repast is 

 very frequently a truly animated one, and he not unfre- 

 quently feels the inconvenience of a too lively dinner, 

 anxious to escape by one of the doors mentioned by Dr. 

 Last in the course of his examination. ' I know them/ 

 saith the worthy Joannes Faber, ' who have learned by 

 ocular inspection that storks, when such serpents as they 

 swallow passed alive through their bodies (as they will 

 do several times), use to clap their tails against a wall so 

 long till they feel the serpents dead within them/ 



Three or four white eggs, with a slight tinge of buff, 

 suboval, some two inches and ten lines in length, and 

 about one inch eleven lines broad, are deposited by the 

 white stork in its ample nest. The parents feed their 

 nestlings after the manner of pigeons, by inserting their 

 own bills within those of their young, and imparting 

 from their own stomach the partly-digested remains of 

 the food which they have last taken. 



That the white stork does not scrupulously confine 

 itself to a fish, frog, and serpent diet, those know to 

 their cost who have suffered it to stalk about near the 

 breeding-places where the wild duck hides her nest. 

 The highly moral bird, whose piety is blazoned in books 

 of emblems carrying his revered parent on his shoulders, 

 and held sacred in so many cities (where, doubtless, they 

 keep their weather eyes open upon their juvenile stray 

 poultry), notwithstanding his solemn gait, is a bit of a 

 Pecksniff in his way. After standing stock-still in a 

 musing attitude, as if he were above the vanities of this 

 world, he has been seen to march slowly by the side of 

 the ornamental lake with the air of a contemplative 

 philosopher, and then disappear among the bushes. 

 Before his disappearance, a snug nest, near the point 

 where he vanished, as if to continue his meditations 



