WHITE STOEK. 117 



'Cranes are not,' writes Bishop Stanley, 'like the Heron, 

 stationary; but even in the countries to which they are most 

 attached, are regular birds of passage; but so punctual in 

 their coming and goings, that from the. most remote times 

 they have been considered as gifted with reasoning powers. 

 The prophet Jeremiah, speaking of their knowledge, contrasts 

 their instinctive obedience to their Creator's laws with the 

 culpable departure therefrom by those on whom God had 

 bestowed the higher gifts of reason and understanding. 'Yea, 

 the Stork in the heaven knoweth her appointed times; and 

 the Turtle, and the Crane, and the Swallow, observe the 

 time of their coming; but my people know not the judgment 

 of the Lord.' Jeremiah, viii. 7. 



So punctual is the arrival and departure of the various 

 migratory birds, that to this day the Persians, as well as 

 ancient Arabs, often form their almanacks on their movements. 

 Thus, the beginning of the singing of the Nightingales was 

 the commencement of a festival welcoming the return of 

 warm weather, while the coming of the Storks was the 

 period of another announcing their joy at the departure of 

 winter. The expression, 'the Stork in the heaven,' is more 

 applicable than at first appears, for even when out of sight, 

 its pathway may be traced by the loud and piercing cries. 



'In the middle of April,' says a traveller in the Holy Land, 

 'while our ship was riding at anchor under Mount Carmel, 

 we saw three nights of these birds, each of which took up 

 more than three hours in passing us, extending itself, at the 

 same time, more than half a mile in breadth.' They were 

 then leaving Egypt, and steering towards the north-east of 

 Palestine, where it seems, from the account of another eye- 

 witness, they abound in the month of May. 'Returning from 

 Cana to Nazareth,' he observes, 'I saw the fields so filled 

 with flocks of Storks, that they appeared quite white with 

 them; and when they rose and hovered in the air, they 

 seemed like clouds. The respect paid in former times to these 

 birds is still shewn; for the Turks, notwithstanding their 

 recklessness in shedding human blood, have a more than 

 ordinary regard for Storks, looking upon them with an almost 

 reverential affection.' 



In the neighbourhood of Smyrna, indeed throughout the 

 whole of the Ottoman dominions, wherever the bird abides 

 during his summer visits, it is welcomed. They call him their 

 friend and their brother, the friend and brother exclusively of 



