STORKS, HERONS, AND PELICAN TRIBE 
55 
approached. In the nests with young there was a 
great difference in age and size, one being about 
a day or so old, and the oldest nearly ready to 
leave the nest — some two or three weeks old — so 
that evidently the birds lay their four eggs at con- 
siderable intervals, and begin to sit on depositing 
the first. After wandering about, a matter of 
difficulty on account of the mud, we found a clutch 
of only three eggs, and one of four, which I man- 
aged to blow. We also obtained two clutches of 
eggs of the purple heron, but some of the latter 
had young.” 
The Ibises, though much alike in form, are 
strangely diverse in colour. One species was 
sacred to the Ancient Egyptians. The reverence 
and affection they showed to this bird, above all 
others, is probably largely due to its migrating 
habits, which obtained in that far past just as 
they do to-day. The naturalist Brehm says on 
rho'.o b) Scholastic Photo. Co. 
YOUNG COMMON HERONS 
These birds hwve not yet acquired their Jull plumage 
Photo by P, Dando., F.Z.S, 
COMMON NIGHT-HERON 
this subject: “When the Nile, after being at its 
lowest ebb, rose again, and the water assumed 
a red tinge, then the ibis appeared in the land 
of the Pharaohs as a sure guarantee that the 
stream — the giver and preserver of life, which 
the people in their profound reverence raised to 
the rank of a god — would once again empty the 
well-spring of plenty over the thirsty land. The 
servant and messenger of an all-bounteous Deity 
commanded of a necessity a reverence of a poetic 
and distinguished character, by reason of its im- 
portance : he too must be a god.” 
The glossy ibis has been found breeding in 
colonies of thousands in Slavonia. The nests are 
large structures formed of sticks and a few weeds, 
never far from the water, and many even, in the 
colony referred to, were so near the surface that 
they appeared to be floating. The eggs, three or 
four in number, are of a beautiful greenish blue. 
The young, while still unable to fly, climb actively 
among the branches of the trees in which the nest 
is placed, clinging so firmly with the feet as to 
be removed with difficulty. 
The Herons and Bitterns. 
In the first mentioned of these two groups 
the Common Heron is the best known. Indeed, 
