In Dutch Water Meadows. 1 1 1 



and fairly accurately figured an undiscovered ante- 

 lope*; the rare Flat-nosed, Two-horned Rhinoceros; 

 a Great Auk in good preservation ; a huge and 

 almost perfect Epiornis egg, bought from a 

 Frenchman for a thousand guilders in our money 

 about ;8o something less than a third of the 

 price paid not long ago for an Auk's egg sold by 

 auction at Stevens' rooms. 



After a five o'clock table d'hote, with a menu 

 to remind us that we had crossed the Channel, 

 a water souchet of Perch with resplendent fins, 

 served with boiled parsley, Chicken with compote 

 de fruits, &c., we had made the most of the 

 remaining hours of daylight by driving out 

 beside canals and ditches glorified by a golden 

 sunset, and through copses ringing with the songs 

 of Ictarine Warblers and Nightingales, to see 

 a Stork's nest, the pride of a neighbouring village. 

 It was on a cartwheel on a high pole in a 

 meadow, near the church, carefully fenced in. 

 Both birds were at home. As we came up, the 

 female, who was "sitting," lifted her head for 

 a minute, and, coming to the conclusion that we 

 were harmless, settled down again. Her mate rose 

 and sailed slowly round the meadow, to return 

 again very soon, and when we drove off stood on 

 one leg, a feathered St. Simeon Stylites on his 

 column, sharp cut in purple shadow above the 

 trees, beside the low-spired tower, against the even- 

 ing sky. 



Storks are becoming much less common in Holland 



* A figure of the Banded Bush Buck, with horns and hoofs 

 judiciously hidden by foliage, as neither of the skins had heads 

 or legs, was published in 1841 in the "Zoologia Typica," by 

 Louis Fraser, naturalist to the Niger Expedition 



