216 RAMBLES OF A NATURALIST. 
The migration which I have attempted to describe was 
soon over, but long after the travellers had passed, we used. 
occasionally to come across a solitary, which was no doubt 
some weakly bird which had been unable to keep up with 
the ranks. The first of these single ones, doomed to a life 
of celibacy, was by my note book observed on the 31st of 
March, watching some husbandmen at work by the edge of 
the cultivated ground. Its air bespoke a moody and 
despondent mind. After a little judicious stalking it was 
brought to bag, when it proved to have black -beetles in its 
throat, and locusts in its gizzard. No doubt it sighed for 
the inundation, and the time when it should bear aloft in 
its terrible shears the juicy frog. 
Other hermits we saw at Silsilis, Kom Ombos, Edfou, 
Erment, and Fechn. They had settled down into their 
summer tameness, and though cut off from their kindred, it 
is to be hoped they found some village mosque on which 
to perform the duties of incubation, and partners to aid 
them in its most important functions; but strange to say, I 
never saw a nest in Egypt, not even at Alexandria or 
Cairo; yet some must remain for the summer, as I 
saw a flock as late as June 12th, but I apprehend that 
Storks in full vigour do not find their northern limit in 
Egypt. 
They appear from what has been written by some authors 
to have been met with in winter, but these may have been 
only individuals arrested on their southward journey by 
the same causes which stopped those we saw on their north- 
ward course. On the 19th of February I observed the first 
one that I am sure about, but my companions thought they 
saw some earlier. 
Specimens pulled down the-steelyard at from 53 to 
64 lbs. I noticed that there were no tertials or feathers 
between the scapulars and secondaries, and that the bron- 
