144 EGYPTIAN BIRDS 
small pool was one solid mass of dead fry, none 
longer than an inch and a half. The water had 
been all over the island, but when I was there in 
April it had gone down, and this mass of im- 
prisoned little fish had died as the water gradually 
dried up. How long they may have been dead I 
do not know, but the level mass of them was so 
untouched that it was clear no gull or heron or 
stork had been there, and yet the district was full of 
these birds; but I presume living food being in 
such profusion round them, they cared not to 
trouble about dead. The pool looked like a large 
basin of the most wonderfully silvery whitebait. 
Up the Nile when flocks of Storks are seen 
they are always either heading due north in spring, 
or due south in autumn. Every now and again 
they indulge, however, sometimes for hours together, 
in curious aerial exercises high up in mid-air over 
one spot—why this is I do not know. This, as is 
the case with so many of birds’ habits, is all that 
can be done—note the fact. Conclusions drawn 
from these facts are vain, as too often man reads 
into these birds’ actions the reasons that would 
occur in his life; and the life of a bird is not as that 
of a man, and the sooner man throws over all such 
ideas that he can tell anything of the causes of 
