172 
STORK MIGRATION. 
And many a circle, many a short essay, 
Wheeled round and round in congregation full, 
The figured flight ascends, and riding high, 
The aerial billow mixes with the clouds. 
Milton has also finely described the flight of these birds :— i 
Part loosely wing the region, part, more wise, 
In common ranged in figure, wedge their way 
Intelligent of seasons, and set forth 
Their airy caravan, high over seas 
Plying and over lands with mutual wing 
Easing their flight. 
How vast are the flocks of these birds which pass from 
country to country in their annual migrations may be 
judged by the fact related by Dr. Shaw, that he saw three 
flights of them leaving Egypt and passing over Mount 
Carmel, each half a mile in breadth ; they occupied three 
hours in passing over. Well may Pope ask : — 
Who bids the Stork, Columbus-like, explore 
Heavens not his own, and worlds unknown before ? 
Who calls the council, states the certain day ? 
Who forms the phalanx, and who points the way ? 
We can only answer — God, working by that mysterious 
faculty, or power, called instinct, by which, as the prophet 
Jeremiah says, ' the Stork knoweth her appointed time.' 
It is aflirmed by an old naturalist, Aldovrandus, that the 
Black Stork is wont to make its nest on trees, particularly 
firs ; as we read in the 14 th Psalm, ^ As for the Stork, the 
fir trees are her house/ Sir H. Wotton paraphrases this 
passage thus : — 
So time the fowls their sundry seats to breed, 
The ranging Stork in stately beeches dwell. 
The Hungarian boys on the islands of the Danube wel- 
come the return of the Storks in spring with a carol like 
this : — 
Stork ! Stork ! poor Stork ! 
Why is thy foot so bloody ? 
A Turkish boy hath torn it : 
Himgarian boy will heal it, 
With fiddle, fife, and drum. 
