118 WHITE STORK. 



the Moslem race, entertaining a belief that wherever the 

 influence of their religion prevailed, he would still bear them 

 company; and it might seem that these sagacious birds are 

 well aware of the predilection; for singularly enough, a 

 recent traveller, 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 Greeks or Armenians, by whom, 

 possibly, 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. 



At another Mohammedan town, Fez, on the coast of Barbary, 

 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, 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 shewn by the young to the old birds, who, 

 when the latter were feeble or sick, would bring them food. 

 This affection, however, appears to be mutual, for the 

 parent birds have a more than ordinary degree of affection 

 for their young, and have been known to perish rather than 

 desert them. 



Besides the Jews other ancient nations held these birds in 

 veneration. A law among the Greeks, obliging children 

 to support their parents, even received its name from a 

 reference to these birds. By the Romans it was called the 



