102 



WILD SPAIN. 



CHAPTER IX. 

 AMONG THE FLAMINGOES. 



KOTES ON THEIR HAUNTS AND HABITS, AND THE DISCOVERY 

 OF THEIR " INCUNABULA." 



Though Flamingoes 

 are found in manj of 

 the countries bordering 

 on the Mediterranean, 

 and their rosy Ijattahons 

 are famihar to Eastern 

 travellers through Egypt 

 and the Suez Canal, yet 

 their mode of nesting, 

 and especially the man- 

 ner in which birds of so 

 singular a form could 

 dispose of their extreme- 

 ly long legs while incu- 

 bating, has remained an 

 unsettled question. Till 

 within the last decade, 

 in default of more recent 

 observations, sundry an- 

 cient fables have passed current. Dampier described the 

 nests of flamingoes seen by him two hundred years ago — 

 in September, 1683 — on one of the Cape de Yerde Islands, 

 as being high conical mounds of mud upon which the 

 female sat astride ("Voyages," i., pp. 70, 71) ; and for two 

 centuries this cavalier position has been accepted as 

 histoiy, no further observations having been made, though 



I 



