THE STORK. 



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 affec- 

 tion. While other couples on the adjacent 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 assisting 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, 

 assume the shape of these birds, that they may visit Barbary, 

 and return at a fixed time to their own country, where they 

 resume the human form. It has been conjectured 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 different reason; they called it 

 Chaseda — which in Hebrew signifies piety or mercy — from 

 the tenderness shown by the young to the older birds, who, 

 when the latter were feeble or sick, would bring them food. 



This affection, however, appears to be mutual, for the parent 

 birds have a more than ordinary degree of affection for their 

 young, and have been known to perish rather than desert 

 them. An attachment of this sort once occasioned the death 

 of an old Stork, at the burning of the city of Delft, in Hol- 

 land. When the flames approached her nest, situated on a 

 house-top, she exerted herself to the utmost to save her young, 

 but finding every effort useless, she remained and perished 



