Thinking black; 22 years without a break in the long grass of Central ...

400 THINKING BLACK
the papyrus. One of these birds I cannot place, Nseva
they call it, and they flock so thickly that they are
a proverb for a united phalanx of patriots. Runic rhyme
this proverb, and Englished thus :
"A thousand Nseva rise at once,
Each one refusing precedence."
Any one of an arithmetical turn of mind, I invite to
consider carefully the following figures indicative of the
thickness of this flock—at one bang 114 (one hundred
and fourteen) fell to the right barrel of a Greener.
Most wonderful of all, some far-travelled storks are
there, daring birds that have shot far down from the
North :—
"Wild birds that change
Their season in the night, and wail their way
From cloud to cloud down the long wind."
Feeding on snakes, frogs, and fish as staple diet, the long
Southward journey gives them an en route chance of a
crab here, a shrimp there. In hard times, where sterile
stretches of desert must be crossed, their crop and stomach
are crammed full of shells. It would seem a wild ex-
aggeration to suggest that these storks ever saw Egypt,
but not far East from here the whole truth of migration
came out. True, a bird cannot talk, but what if one day it
brings a letter, to wit, a light metal ring bearing a number
and date fastened to one leg ? And what if the said
ring proclaims the said stork to have been liberated away
up in North Germany ? The ounce of avoirdupois fact