to relish rats, though they break their bones by repeat- ed blows of their bills.
2. Disdnctiviiy. — The white stork {Ciconia alha, L.) is one of the largest and most conspicuous of land birds, standing nearly four feet high, the jet black of its wings and its bright-red beak and legs contrasting finely with the pure white of its plumage (Zech. v, 9, "They had wings like the wings of a stork"). It is placed by nat-
White Stork {Ciconia alba).
uralists near the heron tribe, with which it has some attinity, forming a connecting-link between it and the spoonbill and ibis, like all of which, the stork feeds on fish and reptiles, especially on the latter. In the neigh- borhood of man it readily devours all kinds of offal and garbage. For this reason, doubtless, it is placed in the list of unclean birds by the Mosaic law (Lev. xi, 19; Dent, xiv, 18). The range of the white stork extends over the whole of Europe, except the British isles, where it is 7iow only a rare visitant, and over Northern Africa and Asia, as far at least as Birmah.
The black stork {Ciconia ni</ra, L.), though less abundant in places, is scarcely less widely distributed, but has a more easterly range than its congener. Both species are ver}' numerous in Palestine — the \f hite stork being universally distributed, generally in pairs, over the whole country; the black stork living in large fiocks, after the fashion of herons, in the more secluded and marsh}' districts. Tristram met with a fiock of up- wards of fifty black storks feeding near the west shore of the Dead Sea. They are still more abundant by the Sea of Galilee, where also the white stork is so numer- ous as to be gregarious, and in the swamps round the waters of Merom.
3. Social Character and Traditional References. — While the black stork is never found about buildings, hut prefers marshy places in forests, and breeds on the to|)s of the loftiest trees, where it heaps up its ample nest far from the haunts of man, the white stork at- taches itself to him, and for the service which it ren- ders in the destruction of reptiles and the removal of offal has been rejiaid from the earliest times by protec- tion and reverence. This is especially the case in the countries where it breeds. In the streets of towns in Holland, in the villages of Denmark, and in the bazaars of Syria and Timis it may be seen stalking gravely aiiKiiig the crowd, and woe betide the stranger either in IliiUand or in Palestine who should dare to molest it. The claim of the stork to protection seems to have been eipially recognised by the ancients. Semjtr. Kufus, who first ventured to bring young storks to table, gained the
STORK
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STORK
following epigram, ou the failure of his candidature for the prajtorship :
"Qiiaiiquam est diiobiis elegautior Plancis Suffragionim puncta iion lulil sepleni. Cicuuiiiruin populiis ultiis est mortem."
Horace contemptuously alludes to the same sacrilege in the lines
"Tutoqne cicoiiia nido, Donee vos auctor docuit piajtorius" (Sat. ii, 2, 49).
Pliny (Hist. Nat. x, 21) tells us that in Thessaly it was a capital crime to kill a stork, and that they were thus valued equally with human life in consequence of their warfare against serpents. They were not less honored in Egypt. It is said that at Fez, in Morocco, there is an endowed hospital for the purpose of assist- ing and nursing sick cranes and storks, and of burying them when dead. The Marocains hold that storks are human beings in that form from some distant islands (see note to Brown's Pseud. £pid. iii, 27, 3). The Turks in Syria point to the stork as a true follower of Islam, from the preference he always shows for the Turkish and Arab over the Christian quarters. For "this undoubted fact, however, there may be two other reasons — the greater amount of offal to be found about the Moslem houses, and the persecutions suifered from the sceptical Greeks, who rob the nests, and sliow none of the gentle consideration towards the lower animals which often redeems the Turkish character. Strick- land (Mem, and Papers^ ii, 227) states that it is said to have quite deserted Greece since the expulsion of its Mohammedan protectors. The observations of travel- lers corroborate this remark. Similarly the rooks were said to be so attached to the old regime that most of them left France at the Eevolution — a true statement, and accounted for by the clearing of most of the fine old timber which used to surround the chateaux of the noblesse. v
As already noted, the derivation of llT^Cn points to the parental and filial attachment of which the stork seems to have been a type among the Hebrews no less than the Greeks and Romans. It was believed that the young repaid the care of their parents by attaching themselves to them for life, and tending them in old age. Hence it was commonly called among the Latins "avispia." (See Laburnus, in Petronius Arbiter; Aris- totle, Hist. Anim. ix, 14 ; and Pliny, Hist. Nat. x, 32.)
Pliny also notices their habit of always returning to the same nest. Probably there is no foundation for the notion that the stork so far differs from other birds as to recognise its parents after it has become mature ; but of the fact of these birds returning year after year to the same spot there is no question. Unless when molested by man, storks' nests all over the world are rebuilt, or rather repaired, for generations on the same site, and in Holland the same individuals have been recognized for many years. That the parental attach- ment of the stork is very strong has been proved on many occasions. The above-mentioned tale of the stork at the burning of the town of Delft has often been repeated, and seems corroborated by unquestionable evi- dence. The name of the bird itself, as we have seen, is expressive of the same fact. Its watchfulness over its young is unremitting, and often shown in a somewhat droll manner. Tristram was once in camp near an old ruined tower in the plain of Zana, south of the Atlas, where a pair of storks had their nest. The four young might often be seen from a little distance, surveying the prospect from their lonely height; but whenever any of the human party happened to stroll near the tower, one of the old storks, invisible before, would in- stantly appear, and, lighting on the nest, put its foot gently on the necks of all the young, so as to hold them" down out of sight till the stranger had passed, snapping its bill meanwhile, and assuming a grotcscpie air of indifference and unconsciousness of there being anything under its charge.