504} CLASS AVES. 



oysters, crabs, spiders, and the larvae of insects. It evinced 

 the greatest possible avidity for cheese, and an equal repug- 

 nance for butter. After having swallowed rats, it returned 

 them entire, and shewed no desire for any more of them. 

 It also refused pbalsense, leeches, the eggs of lizards and 

 salamanders. This stork allowed itself to be touched and 

 caressed by the children, and when driven out of any place, 

 it would retire, without resistance, but with a grand step, and 

 elevated head. 



The Black Stork (Ciconia Nigra) is, in many points of 

 its disposition, as different from the preceding species as it 

 is in its colour. Solitude appears to have peculiar charms 

 for this bird. It flies the busy haunts of men, and the hum 

 of population, and retires to distant marshes, and lonely 

 wastes of waters. It fixes its nest in the depth of the woods, 

 on old trees, particularly fir-trees, and deposits there two 

 or three eggs, of a dirty white, shaded with greenish, and 

 sometimes having a few brown spots. It is common in 

 the Alps of Switzerland, from which it descends to the 

 banks of lakes, the least frequented, to watch its prey, 

 hovering over the waters, and sometimes plunging in 

 to seize its victim. Fish, however, is not its only food, 

 for it seeks the mountain herbage, snails, reptiles, sca- 

 rabasi, and grasshoppers. Its flight is very elevated, 

 and it rises to such a height in the air as to appear no 

 larger than a sparrow. This species, less numerous and less 

 extended than the white stork, seems to shun the haunts fre- 

 quented by the latter, and to adopt in preference those coun- 

 tries which it does not visit. It is found, but rarely, in 

 Poland, in Prussia, and several other parts of Germany, and 

 even in Sweden. It is very frequent in Switzerland, but 

 very scarce in Holland, which is the favourite country of the 

 white stork ; like the latter, it is also an emigrating bird, and 

 removes when frost and snow deprive it of food. It is on 

 the occasion of such migrations that it is seen in Lorraine, 



