108 RAMBLES OF A NATURALIST. 
Europe? Their heads are all to the north; they are flying 
low, like birds with a settled object. Less numerous, but 
still innumerable, and with the same aim, and flying in the 
same direction, I see a cloud of Sand Martins. At the rate 
they are now going they will soon be decimating insect 
life at Cairo, and hawking over the pools of El Fostat, 
in conjunction with the Rufous-breasted Swallow and its 
distinct English congener. But all Egyptian birds are not 
migrants. There are the stay-at-homes, and one of these is 
the Hooded Crow, which sits in the Sycamore-fig, announcing 
with loud caws, to all who may be interested in the fact, 
that she has laid her eggs; and another is the parasitic 
Greater spotted Cuckoo, which chuckles at the thought of 
having added one to the number. These belong to a class 
which is divisible into flats and sharpers; birds who “do” 
others, or are themselves “ done.” 
In the long grass the Fantail builds her gem of a nest, 
and the Drymeca gracilis, another minute Warbler, chir- 
rups to her young ones, “branchers” already with little 
bodies and no tails. 
Small rodents spring into the ditches: lizards scuttle up 
the walls of the houses; the moving snake eyes the 
fledgling; and the sly fox trots away among the tobacco 
plants. So great is the overflow of animal life, that no one 
can fail to be struck by it. Only those can appreciate the 
“scene in its zoological aspect who are capable of discrimina- 
ting between the many species, though all can and must, 
listen with unmixed feelings of pleasure to the chanting of 
the choristers, and the hum of many insects, and all must 
feel the balmy air and fragrant luxuriance of foliage and 
blossom, and derive enjoyment from the view before them, 
the rock-cut tombs, the tents, the camels, the Bedouins with 
their long guns, the latteen sails upon the river, and the 
mountains in the hazy distance. 
I shall be pardoned if I next submit a brief companion 
