320 THE STORK. 



who met with them in incredible numbers in Asia Minor, 

 observed that although they built on the mosques, minarets, 

 and Turkish houses, their nests were never erected on a 

 Christian roof. In the Turkish quarters they were met in 

 all directions, strutting about most familiarly, mixing with 

 the people in the streets, but rarely entering the parts of the 

 town inhabited by the Greeks or Armenians, by whom possi- 

 bly they may be occasionally disturbed. Nothing can be 

 more interesting than the view of an assemblage of their 

 nests. 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 

 affection. While other couples on {he 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 Bar- 

 bary, 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, 



