LEAVES FROM THE NOTE-BOOK OF A NATURALIST. 



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, car- 

 rying 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 orna- 

 mental lake with the air of a contemplative phi- 

 losopher, and then disappear among the bushes. 

 Before his disappearance a snug nest near the 

 point where he vanished, as if to continue his 

 meditations undisturbed by human eye, has been 

 seen full of goodly little dusky powder puffs of 

 wild ducklings, and somehow or other, when he 

 has emerged from the wilderness, it has been 

 soon after discovered that the nest was empty. 

 This feathered ogre was in the habit of visiting 

 the nests day by day, biding his time till incubation 

 was fully complete, when he swallowed every 

 squab that had come to light. But every living 

 thing eats only to be eaten. As far as humanity 

 is concerned the white stork appears to have gone 

 out of fashion, and come in again as a savory dish. 



Cornelius Nepos, who died in the daies of Au- 

 gustus Caesar Emperor, in that chapter, where he 

 wrote that a little before his time men began to feed 

 and cram blackbirds and thrushes in coupes, saith 

 moreover, that in his daies storks were holden for 

 a better dish at the bourd than cranes. And yet 

 see how in our age now no man will touch a storke 

 if it be set before him upon the bourd ; but every 

 one is readie to reach unto the crane, and no dish 

 is in more request.* 



Horace, in his bitter second satire,f writes : 



Tutus crat rhombus, tutoquc ciconia nido : 

 Donee vos auctor docuit Prastorius. 



And the gay Petronius rattles along the lines, in 

 which we hear the clatter of the bird's beak : 



Cicojiia etiam grata, peregrina, hospita, 

 Pietaticultrix, gracilipes, crotalistria, . 

 Avis exsul hiemis, titulus tepedi ternporis, 

 Nequitioe nidum in cacabo fecit meo.J 



Old Belon (anno 1555) quotes the passage from 

 Pliny with the following comment : " Voulant 

 dire que les Grues estoyent en delices, et les cicog- 

 nes n'estoyent touchees de personne." But he 

 adds, " Maintenant les Cicognes sont tenues pour 

 viande royale." 

 * Holland's Pliny. t L. 49. * Satyricon, c. 55. 



We do not trace it in our household books. 

 Indeed, the bird never comes to these islands regu- 

 larly ; and but a few instances of its presence here 

 in a free state are recorded, though it is so frequent 

 on the continent, and much further north Russia 

 for example. 



In the old Pharmacopoeia, which it must be 

 owned contained many a rich prescription, the 

 white stork made a great show. He who ate the 

 flesh, roasted or boiled, might safely go to the wars, 

 as far as his nerves and joints were concerned ; 

 and it was considered equally potent against the 

 more cruel domestic enemies, gout and sciatica. 

 A diet on the young was equally efficient in dis- 

 orders of the eyes ; and their ashes made an infal- 

 lible collyrium. To cure paralysis you had only 

 to catch a young stork, clap its bill under its wing, 

 suffocate it under a pillow, chop it up, put the 

 pieces into an alembic, save the distilled liquor, and, 

 after having bathed the disabled limb with a decoc- 

 tion of crabs without salt, mind you anoint it 

 with the aforesaid essence of stork, and follow this 

 course alternately ; when, if the patient were not 

 cured, 't was a wonder. If you should have some 

 misgivings concerning the efficacy of the nestlings, 

 consult Leonellus Faventinus, and he will tell you 

 that an old stork, plucked and simmered in oil, till 

 the flesh separates from the bones, is just as good 

 against the same disease as oil of vipers. Take 

 one ounce of camphor, with a drachm of the best 

 amber, place it in the belly of an exenterated 

 young stork caught before he can fly, distil it, and 

 Andreas Furnerius will assure you that you have an 

 infallible cosmetic, which we venture to state will 

 mend complexions as effectually as the Circassian 

 Bloom or Rowland's Kalydor. Pliny will convince 

 you that the stomach of the bird was a specific 

 against all poisons, and Belon corroborates him. 

 In short, not to weary you, dear reader, the stork, 

 according to these wise men, was a universal med- 

 icine chest. 



The bird was looked up to by more than one 

 profession. The gardener looked at its bill, and 

 named one of his most favorite groups of plants 

 Pelargonium; the chemist beheld it, and fashioned 

 his retort ; and the apothecary took a hint from 

 the practice of the bird about which we care not 

 to be particular, though some will have it that it 

 was the ibis, and not the stork, which made the 

 suggestion. And here we may observe, that Be- 

 lon and others are of opinion that our bird is the 

 white ibis of Herodotus (Euterpe, 76 ;) but it 

 should be remembered that the moderns, as well as- 

 the delightful Halicarnassian, record, and with 

 truth, a white as well as a dark species of ibis ; 

 and it is not less true that there is a black as well, 

 as a white stork. 



The black stork* is the very opposite to th" 

 white species, in manners as well as in color, fly- 

 ing from the haunts of men as eagerly as they are- 

 sought by the latter. The food is nearly the samo 

 as that of Ciconia alba, with, however, a greateu 

 leaning towards a fish diet. 



* Ciconia nigra. 



