214 RAMBLES OF A NATURALIST. 
Jellah will look on unmoved if you desire to shoot one. He 
will have a worse opinion’ of you for shooting the Buff- 
backed Herons, and he is right there, because the good: 
they do is so very palpable and obvious. 
‘ With these preliminary observations, I will at once com- 
mence with my first experience of Storks in Egypt, which 
was about the end of March, and I dare say I shall not be 
believed when I describe the prodigious migratory flights 
which passed us. Armies of them would whiten the sand- 
banks at early morning, which had evidently spent the 
night there; and by day they were to be seen sailing round 
and round in countless myriads. It dazed the eye to look 
at them. The air seemed scribbled with their white forms. 
I am within bounds in saying that there seemed enough 
Storks to stock every church, and every tower, and every 
public office in the whole of civilized Europe. To those 
who deem me romancing, let me say this: no one should 
disbelieve a thing because he has not seen it. It must be 
borne in mind that Egypt, or at least the Nile valley (they. 
are synonymous terms) is one of the greatest arteries, so to 
speak, by which feathered migrants seek a northern clime. 
Like man, they shun to cross the Great Sahara, where the 
sands are trackless and the elixir of life—water—is wanting. 
Hence their teeming thousands in the Nile valley. For the 
same number, which in another and a fertile land would per- 
haps be spread over 3,000 miles, are here compressed into a 
space which on a average is only three miles broad. And this 
will go on for ever. The channel which has been found so 
often will be found again; and unless their numbers are 
kept down by disease, each succeeding year will probably 
witness greater and greater droves, for few guns are em- 
ployed against them, and they enjoy a comparative 
immunity alike from the real sportsman, the naturalist, and. 
the pot-hunter. 
The first time we saw a drove was very late in the 
