2 3 6 



THE HUNTER'S ARCADIA. 



Not till then did I recognise what these unknowns 

 were. Now I became aware that they were Abdim's 

 storks (Ciconia Abdimif), perhaps the handsomest of 

 all the species of this family. The extent of country 

 which they inhabit may well be imagined when I state 

 that I have found them in equal abundance in the 

 toundras of Mongolia, the marshes of Southern Siberia, 

 the flats surrounding the Mababe river, or the locality 

 of Lake N 'Garni. Like all the storks that I have 

 met with in Southern Africa, they possess that 

 ludicrous habit of dancing and posing themselves 

 in strange attitudes in front of each other. The 

 reason of these movements is, doubtless, to excite 

 the admiration of the opposite sex. It is a strange 

 and quaint way of doing so, we may think ; still, 

 it is not half so absurd, I may say senseless, in 

 them, as the sight of human beings dancing some 

 of their most popular sets when deprived of the 

 charitably disposing influences of music. 



Abdim's stork appears to be gifted with most extra- 

 ordinary powers of digestion and a love for a variety 

 of food, for it devours with equal gusto, locusts or 

 beetles, with a wholesome intermixture of frogs, water- 

 rats, snakes, and fish. Nature, in her providence, has 



