The following stories concerning storks seem to indicate that
they have views concerning the purity of their race and act
upon them: Bishop Stanley relates that a French surgeon at
Smyrna, being unable to procure a stork, on account of the
great veneration entertained for them by the Turks, purloined
all the eggs from a stork’s nest and replaced them with hen’s
eggs. Ultimately, chickens were hatched, greatly to the surprize
of the storks. The male stork speedily disappeared and was not
seen for two or three days, when he returned with a large
number of other storks, who assembled in a circle in the town,
without paying any attention to the numerous spectators their
proceedings attracted. The female stork was brought into the
midst of the circle, and, after some discussion, was attacked
by the whole flock and torn to pieces. The assemblage then
dispersed and the nest was left tenantless. A somewhat similar
case has been cited by the same author as having occurred in the
vicinity of Berlin. Two storks made their nest on one of the
chimneys of a mansion, and the owner of the house, inspecting
it, found in it an egg, which he replaced by one belonging to
a goose. The stork did not appear to notice the change until
the egg was hatched, when the male bird rose from the nest,
and, after flying around it several times with loud screams,
disappeared. For some days the female bird continued to tend
the changeling without interruption; but on the morning of the
fourth day the inmates of the house were disturbed by loud cries
in a field fronting it. The noise proceeded from nearly five
hundred storks standing in a compact body listening, apparently,
to the harangue of a solitary bird about twenty yards off. When
this bird had concluded its address it retired and another took
its place and addrest the meeting in a similar manner. These
proceedings were continued by a succession of birds until eleven
in the forenoon, when the whole court rose simultaneously into
the air, uttering dismal cries. All this time the female had
remained in her nest, but in evident fear. When the meeting
broke up all the storks flew toward her, headed by one--supposed
to be the offended husband--who struck her violently three or
four times, knocking her out of the nest. The unfortunate stork
made no effort to defend herself, and was speedily destroyed by
the troop, who also annihilated the hapless gosling and left
not a fragment of the contaminated nest.--_Popular Science
Monthly._
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