26 LEAVES EKOM THE 



beautiful than tlie queen of heaven. Juno, who was not 

 remarkable for patience under such insults, uttered the 

 fiat of degradation; and poor Antigone found her delicate 

 nose and exquisite mouth elongate into a red horny 

 beak, and her fair body stilted up on two lofty skinny 

 red \e^s, with nothing but the flattened nails at the end 

 of her attenuated toes, to remind her of limbs cast in the 

 most perfect feminine mould. This form of the nails did 

 not escape Willughby, who says, writing of the bird, — 

 ' Its claws are broad, like the nails of a man ; so that 

 •jrXot.Tvw.vx'^s will not be sufficient to difference a man 

 from a stork with its feathers pluckt off.' Poor Antigone ! 

 Instead of a king's board graced with every delicacy, her 

 table was to be thereafter spread in the wilderness. But 

 the irritable and jealous goddess seems to have had some 

 touch of mercy; for, according to the legends, she left 

 the transformed all her vutues and amiable qualities 

 when she punished her insolence. Gratitude, tempe- 

 rance, chastity, piety, were some of the bright spots left 

 to console her for her otherwise dark lot ; and they have, 

 it would seem, adorned the species ever since. 



Of the gratitude of storks, there are stories enough to 

 fill a volume. They were said, on their annual return to 

 their nests on the house-tops, regularly to throw down to 

 their landlord one of their young ones by way of rent or 

 tribute, — an act of justice executed a little at the expense 

 of then- parental character. Well, if you are not inclined 

 to believe this, best of readers, listen to the story of 

 Heracleis of Tarentum, the good, the chaste, the pious 

 Heracleis. She, when the angel of death smote her 

 beloved husband, wept long and sorely, but not like her 

 of Ephesus. No, she could no longer endure the sight of 

 the empty chair and the widowed couch, but set up her 

 abode at her husband's tomb. Here, as she sat in her 

 sorrow on a lovely summer's day, when all was smiling 

 but the dejected widow, she beheld a pair of storks 



