254- TRAVELS IN UPPER 



Groves always smiling with verdure, detached 

 trees, but at very small distances from each other, 

 bound the view, and do not permit it to extend 

 itself but by numerous openings, which conduct 

 it to prospects more or less distant, more or less 

 pleasing. Enclosures,, where plants of every spe- 

 cies "flourish, where the golden apples of the 

 orange-tree crown the sweetest of perfumed flow- 

 ers, and the useful and modest pot-herbs ; plains 

 on which fertility has fixed her abode, even the 

 huts of labouring men, the animals which live 

 around them, every thing gives delight in a land- 

 scape so variegated ; all rejoices the soul and gra- 

 tifies the sieht. 



'&• 



A multitude of birds collect themselves in a 

 country so beautiful : they seem, by their num- 

 bers, by their movements, and by the diversity of 

 their accents, to celebrate there that continual ban- 

 quet of nature, these eternal blessings of fertility. 



I saw, in this place, turtle-doves of two species, 

 blackbirds, lapwings, and white .herons, which the 

 French who inhabit Egypt, name the ox-keeper, 

 because, in reality, they seek the places frequented 

 by these animals, follow them, and often perch on 

 their backs *. In Egypt two species of herons are 



* Aigrette. Buffbn, Hist. Nat. des Ois. et pi. enlum. No. 

 901. Ardea garzetta. Lin. 



found ; 



