which did not break the bone, and the bird lived in his
possession more than twelve months, in excellent health.
This example is still preserved in the British Museum.
Since that time the species has been observed on several
occasions. Mr. Stevenson found in Mr. Joseph Clarke’s
MS. notes on rare birds at Yarmouth, a record that three
Black Storks were followed in Norfolk for some days in the
year 1823; and one, shot at Otley, in Suffolk, in October
1832, is stated by the late Rev. J. Mitford (Jesse’s Gleanings,
3rd Ser. ii. p. 188) to have been in the possession of
Mr. Acton [erroneously printed Diton], of Grundisburgh,
near Ipswich. In November 1831 a specimen was obtained
on the Tamar or the Lynher, on the borders of Devon and
Cornwall, and was recorded by the late Dr. E. Moore, who
saw the bird while warm. On the 22nd November, 1839,
a Black Stork, in the collection of the Earl of Malmesbury,
at Heron Court, Christchurch, was killed in Poole Harbour,
Dorsetshire ; and in the same locality another, now in Mr.
J. H. Gurney’s collection, was obtained in 1849. In Kent,
one was shot prior to 1844 in Romney Marsh ; and on the
5th of May, 1856, another was obtained near Lydd in the
same district. A fine specimen was shot on Market Weigh-
ton Common in 1852, and is now in the Museum of the
Yorkshire Philosophical Society. In Durham one, near
Hartlepool, in August 1862, was recorded by and came into
the possession of Mr. Christy Horsfall (Zool. p. 8196). Mr.
Gould, in his ‘ Birds of Great Britain,’ mentions an example
obtained at Otmoor in November 1862 ; and this is possibly
the same which is said by Mr. C. M. Prior to have been
shot on the 5tli August, 1865, on Osmoor, a large tract of
low-lying land some nine miles N.E. of Oxford (Zool. 1877,
p. 180). On the 19th of May, 1867, an adult female was
shot in Norfolk at Westacre, where it had been living about
the river for a week or more, as recorded by Mr. Anthony
Hamond, jun. (Ibis, 1867, p. 382), in whose collection it
now is. Mr. J. H. Gurney, jun., states, in Mason’s ‘ History
of Norfolk,’ that one was shot at Breydon, on the 27th of
June, 1877. Lastly, a bird of this species appears to have
been killed between July and the 8th of September, 1883,
near Rainham in Essex (Zool. 1884, p. 429).
There is no record of the occurrence of the Black Stork in
Scotland; and as regards Ireland, the only evidence is the
statement of Giraldus Cambrensis (1183-86), who says, in
his ‘ Topographia Hibernica,’—“ Ciconias vero per totam
insulam rarissim* sunt illae nigrae.”
The Black Stork is only a straggler to Norway; but it
breeds sparingly in the forests of the south of Sweden;
Denmark; Brunswick, Hanover, Pomerania, and some other
parts of Germany ; Poland; Central and Southern Russia;
the Danubian provinces; and Turkey. It also nests in
Spain ; and is said to visit Madeira. In the rest of Europe
it occurs as a migrant. To the eastward, it is known to
breed in Palestine, and it can be traced through Persia,
Turkestan, Siberia up to 55° N. lat., and Mongolia, to China,
where, according to Swinlioe, it nests on the cliffs of the
mountains near Pekin; and it winters as far south as
Central India. It is found throughout Northern Africa,
from Morocco to Egypt, Nubia, and Abyssinia; and it
appears to be generally distributed throughout that continent
down to Cape Colony.
The character of the Black Stork, as observed by many
ornithologists, is in one respect diametrically opposed to
that of the White Stork. Instead of domesticating itself,
as it were, with man, it shuns his society, and makes its
temporary dwelling in the most secluded spots, frequenting
impenetrable morasses, or the banks of such rivers and lakes
as are seldom disturbed by the presence of intruders, and
building its nest on forest trees. Mr. H. J. Elwes, who
visited four out of the ten or twelve nests which still exist
in Jutland, describes one as a large and heavy mass of
sticks, about four feet in diameter, lined with tufts of green
moss, so as to form a shallow depression about two feet
across, situated about thirty-five feet from the ground, in a
good-sized beech-tree. Another was on an old nest of the
White-tailed Eagle, in a small beech, overlooking a wide
marshy valley in the forest (Ibis, 1880, p. 389). Mr. See