Birds. 7509 



upon them, pec1<ing them literally to pieces ; this ceremony over, they started for 

 Egypt. How they got their reputation for filial piety I cannot imagine. I heard a 

 curious anecdote about ihem a few days since. An English manufacturer, settled 

 somewhere in Zealand, amused himself by changing the eggs laid by a stork, who 

 annually built her nest on his house, for those of an owl. In due course of lime the 

 eggs were hatched, and he was startled one morning by a tremendous row going on in 

 the nest of the parent storks. The male, in a violent state of excitement, flew round 

 and round his nest ; the female chattered away, protecting her nestlings under her 

 wings ; it was quite evident that the stork was not satisfied with the produce of his 

 helpmate ; there was something louche about the whole affair ; he would not recognise 

 the offspring. After a violent dispute the male flew away, and shortly returned, accom- 

 panied by two other storks — birds of consequence and dignity. They sat themselves 

 down on the roof, and listened to the pro* and cons of the matter. Mis. Stork was 

 compelled to rise and exhibit her children. " Can they be mine ? exclaimed the stork. 

 " Happen what may I will never recognise them.'' On her side Mrs. Stork protested 

 and fluttered, and vowed it was all witchcraft — never had stork possessed so faithful a 

 wife before. Alas ! how seldom the gentle sex meets with justice in this world, when 

 judged by man, or, in this case, stoik kind. The judges looked wondrous wise, con- 

 sulted, and then of a sudden, without pronouncing sentence, regardless of her shrieks 

 for mercy, fell on the injured Mrs. Stork, and pecked her to death with their long 

 sharp beaks. As for the young owls, they would not defile their bills by touching 

 them ; so they kicked them out of the nest, and they were killed in the tumble. The 

 father stork, broken-hearted, quitted his abode, and never again returned to his former 

 building-place. Six years have elapsed, and the nest still remains empty ; so stated 

 iny informant. — Marryat's ' Residence in Jutland.' 



The Black Surf Duck. — On the Slian-tuiig side of the Gulf of Pe-Chili is a 

 remarkable promontory with a flat sandy neck and a saddle-head of granite. This 

 from a distance looks like an island, bnt on a nearer acquaintance its true nature is 

 obvious. The suif duck and Saddle Point go together in ray mind and refuse to be 

 separated, so you cannot have one without the other. A gale of wind had swept over 

 the gulf the day previously, so the water is now unsettled and turbid, a dull haze 

 formed of fine sand fills the air, and a " mirage" causes everything at a distance to 

 assume a distorted, unreal appearance. As you land you encounter at first nothing 

 but glare and sand : along the margin of the shallow bay and in the sea-weedy pools 

 left by the receding tide are countless myriads of ladybirds drowned, like Pharaoh's 

 host, in the waters of the sea; they have been blown from the opposite coast, and are 

 now driven up by the waves in ridges miles long and in red heaps among the hollows 

 and corners of the outcropping granite rocks. Here and there we come across a magni- 

 ficent swimming crab (Neptunus gladiator, De Haan); but these " waifs and strays" 

 are just as eagerly sought after by lean, hungry cormorants and loud-screaming gulls 

 as by inquisitive peripatetic naturalists, so the latter '^^ animal implume bipes" only 

 comes in for a scattered mass of fragments loo hard and spiky even for the maw of a 

 cormorant or a gull. Some specimens of a pretty Polybius, in a perfect state, fall 

 however to his share. As we descend the brown and barren stoue-slrewn hill towards 

 a little Sahara of sand a hare limps away before us, and the hot bare rocks are enlivened 

 by the coquettish movements of the pretty hoopoe, but beyond these and grasshoppers 

 there are no signs of life. We pass through a small, close, unsavoury village, and 

 arrive at a vast level sandy plain, quite hard and dry in some parts, but showing 



