102 



WILD SPAIN. 



CHAPTEE IX. 

 AMONG THE FLAMINGOES. 



NOTES ON THEIR HAUNTS AND HABITS, AND THE DISCOVERY 

 OF THEIR " INCUNABULA." 



Though Flamingoes 

 are found in many of 

 the countries bordering 

 on the Mediterranean, 

 and then- rosy battalions 

 are familiar 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 Verde 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 

 history, no further observations having been made, though 



