266 Unexplored Spain 
Howard Saunders, cbed., 1869, and the same authority in the 
Ibis, 1871, pp. 394 et seq. 
The late Crown Prince Rudolph of Austria, who visited Spain 
in May 1879, likewise failed to reach the nesting spot—apparently 
through the usual cause, not going far enough—though a few 
egos were found scattered on the wet mud of the marisma. 
(Recorded by Lord Lilford as above.) 
Thus the question remained unsettled till 1883, when a 
favouring season enabled the present authors to succeed where 
greater ornithologists had striven in vain. 
A venerable apologue attaches to the nesting habit of the 
flamingo. Owing to the length of its legs, it was assumed that 
the bird could not incubate in the ordinary manner of birds, 
and that, therefore, it stood astraddle on a nest built up to the 
requisite height—a combination of unproved assumption with 
inconsequential deduction. "“Iwere ungracious to be wise after 
the event, yet, in fact, this fable passed current as “ Natural 
History” for precisely two centuries—from 1683, when Dampier 
so described the nesting of flamingoes on the Cape de Verde 
Islands,’ till 1883, when the present authors had opportunity of 
observing a flamingo-colony in southern Spain. 
Flamingoes do not nest every year in the Spanish marismas. 
Their doing so depends on the season, and only in very wet years 
is the attempt made. Rarely, even then, are young hatched off, 
so persistently are the wastes raided by egg-lifters, who sweep up 
by wholesale every edible thing, and to whom a “ Flamingo 
1 Dampier, New Voyage round the World, 2nd ed., i. p. 71; London, 169°. 
