THE ROSE-COLOURED STARLING. 29 



year. The railway from Tchernavoda to Medjidi 

 is across a series of swamps full of reeds, some 

 twelve feet high. Ducks and Geese come down 

 here to feed, and the Great Reed- Warbler and the 

 Bearded Tit make the reeds their home. Now 

 and then a Purple Heron, a Stork or a Demoiselle 

 Crane gets up, and Marsh-Harriers range over the 

 swamp. On the outskirts of the reed-bed, 

 luxurious grass grows, leading up to perpendicular 

 cliffs from 50 to 100 feet high. Some of these 

 are of a white chalk, and some consist of a buff 

 calcareous conglomeration ; but most of the cliffs 

 are sandy earth, full of Bee-eaters' holes. 



" The valley is about a mile wide, and has 

 evidently, within a comparatively recent date, 

 geologically speaking, been the main mouth of 

 the Danube. The lakes north and south of 

 Kustendji, are as evidently the silted-up mouths 

 of the various arms of the river which formed the 

 ancient delta of the Danube, which was probably 

 destroyed by the drifting sand driven by the east 

 winds from the shores of the Black Sea. Where 

 the cliffs are rock, the action of the water, and 

 possibly of the ice, has hollowed them into 

 caverns and ledges and holes, usually tenanted by 



