440 Letters, Announcements, ^c. 



likely that some eggs might be preserved in the country-house 

 of a friend of his who lived away in the Camargue, some dozen 

 or moi'e miles from Aries. So I got a carriage and drove to 

 his house, a farm close to the great Etang du Valcares, the 

 largest of the many salt or brackish lakes that lie in the delta 

 of the Rhone. Camargue, or He de la Camargue, is the name 

 given to the fen-country on the right bank of that river, between 

 it and the Petit Rhone. Its northern portion is very rich and 

 well cultivated ; but the southern districts are mere moor or 

 brackish marshes, interspersed with vast lakes ; and then a long- 

 line of dunes marks where the land ends and the sea be- 

 gins. The Valcares is seven or eight miles by about half that 

 width, but with a depth of not more than three feet in any part. 

 A chain of sand-banks, on which rushes and so forth grow 

 scantily, divides it from the Etang du Fournelet, a salt-lake of 

 much less extent. Here there are salt-works ; and a dyke has 

 been lately made to hinder the comparatively fresh water of the 

 Valcares from spoiling the pure salt of the Fournelet. When I 

 arrived at the farm-house, I found I had just missed its owner. 

 I saw his mother, however, from whom I learnt that there were 

 no eggs there. So on I went to see the lake, and gain what 

 information I could. I soon met a boatman, who told me that 

 the Flamingos used to lay their eggs on the sand-banks between 

 Valcares and Fournelet, where you would pick them up " comme 

 des coquillages sur les bords de la mer," as many as three 

 score at a time, that there was no nest, and that the young, he 

 believed, were hatched by the heat of the sun ! This year he 

 had seen very few birds, if any. Thence 1 proceeded to another 

 farm on the isthmus between Valcares and Fournelet, where I 

 conversed with a herdsman who had been fifteen years on the 

 property. He had seen some Flamingos that very day, and for 

 some days previously — about forty, flying from Fournelet to 

 Valcares in the morning and back at night. Valcares is full of 

 a small varifety of the common cockle {Cardium edule), on which 

 the birds feed, and they drink at the streams that flow into the 

 lake. It is the custom for sportsmen to "lie up""^ near one of their 

 drinking-places and wait for them. As many as seven have been 

 killed at one shot. He had never seen or heard of eggs. The 



