THE STORK'S RAPID FLIGHT.
No LIVING thing, not even a scared jack-rabbit, can travel with the speed displayed by such birds as the stork and the northern blue-throat. Not only do these birds fly with a speed which can hardly be conceived, but they keep up their rapid flight for one or two thousand miles at a stretch without apparently tiring. Evidence has been collected recently which shows that the blue-throat flies from Central Africa to the shores of the North Sea, a distance of one thousand miles, in less than a day and a night, and making it, moreover, in one uninterrupted flight. The storks, which spend their summers in Austria-Hungary and their winters in India and Central Africa, are most marvelous travelers, and make their journeys twice a year in one unbroken flight each time. From Budapest in Hungary, to Lahore, in India, is about 2,400 miles in an air line, and the storks make the journey in twenty-four hours, thus traveling at the rate of 100 miles an hour for the whole distance. The storks which spend their summer in Central Europe and the winter in Central Africa travel with the same rapidity. Slatin Pasha, an Austrian in the service of the khedive, and now governor of the Central African province of Darfur, was for many years a captive in the hands of the Mahdi and the Khalifa when the dervishes killed Gordon and established their empire, now overthrown, in the Soudan. One day, at Omdurman, he saw a stork with a metal band attached to one of its legs. He caught the bird and found engraved upon the band the name of an old friend in Austria. He wrote a note to his friend and tied it to the metal band. When the stork returned to Austria for the summer, the friend saw the letter, caught the stork and read the message, which was the first certain assurance that the outside world received that Slatin was still alive. This stork, as was proved by the dates, made the journey from Omdurman to the Austrian country place, a distance of nearly 3,000 miles, at a speed of more than 100 miles an hour.