THE STORKS 143 
built on the top of buildings and barns in Holland 
or Germany to encourage the bird to come and 
nest. The Stork and the Swallow know their 
seasons, and people love to have these messengers 
of the coming summer make their home with 
them; and in many places there are traditions of 
the same site having been used by them for nesting 
in for hundreds of years. Of all this side of their 
life, however, those seen in Egypt show nothing, 
as nearly all that come are simply migrating stil] 
farther south. A very few do remain throughout 
the winter in one or two exceptionally favoured 
feeding - grounds; Lake Menzaleh, for instance, 
with its great area of shallow water teeming with 
fish and aquatic insect life, is a favourite haunt. 
The profusion of life in every pool and puddle 
throughout Egypt is really astonishing. I have 
seen isolated spaces hardly exceeding a couple of 
square yards absolutely teeming and heaving with 
innumerable beetles and larve of flies and insects. 
I can also recall one little pool in the centre of 
one of the many small nameless islands in Lake 
Menzaleh: when I approached it, from its glitter- 
ing whiteness I took it to be one of those salt- 
covered basins that are everywhere, but when I 
looked close the whole floor of what had been a 
