THE STORK. 343 



mosques, minarets, and Turkish houses, their nests were 

 never erected on a Christian roof. In the Turkish 

 quarters they were met in all directions, strutting about 

 most familiarly, mixing with the people in the streets, 

 but rarely entering the parts of the town inhabited by 

 the Greeks or Armenians, by whom, possibly, they may 

 be occasionally disturbed. Nothing can be more inter- 

 esting than the view of an assemblage of their nests. 

 Divided as they always are, into pairs, sometimes only 

 the long elastic neck of one of them is to be seen peering 

 from its cradle of nestlings, the mate standing by on one 

 of his long slim legs, and watching with every sign of 

 the closest affection. While other couples on the adja- 

 cent walls are fondly entwining their pliant necks, and 

 mixing their long bills, the one sometimes bending her 

 neck over her back, and burying her bill in the soft 

 plumage, while her companion, clacking his long beak 

 with a peculiar sharp and monotonous sound, raises her 

 head and embraces it with a quivering delight; while 

 from the holes and crannies of the walls, below the 

 Stork's nest, thousands of little blue Turtle-Doves flit in 

 all directions, keeping up an incessant cooing by day and 

 night. 



At another Mohammedan town, Fez, on the coast of 

 Barbary, there is a rich hospital, expressly built, and 

 supported by large funds, for the sole purpose of assist- 

 ing and nursing sick Cranes and Storks, and of burying 

 them when dead! This respect arises from a strange 

 belief, handed down from time immemorial, that the 

 Storks are human beings in that form, men from some 

 distant islands, who, at certain seasons of the year, as- 

 sume the shape of these birds, that they may visit Bar- 

 bary, and return at a fixed time to their own country, 

 where they resume the human form. It has been con- 

 jectured, that this tradition came originally from Egypt, 

 where the Storks are held in equal respect, as we shall 

 see, when we speak of their sacred bird, the Ibis. By 

 the Jews, the former was also respected, though for a 



