ing the seasons and following them. He said, "Yea, the stork in the heaven knoweth her appointed times," which proved that he had been observing the birds; and then he added, "but my people know not the ordinances of the Lord." The splendid picture these birds made in flight so impressed Zechariah, the man who was given to seeing visions, that in the instance of the ephah of lead and the talent he said of the two women he saw bearing away the ephah, "The wind was in their wings, for they had wings like the wings of a stork." These birds came with the showers and renewal of spring, settled in every available spot all over Palestine, and began housekeeping. Workers in the fields saw the home life of those by the rivers; fishermen were familiar with them around lakes of fresh water, and where rivers entered the salt seas; herdsmen of the plains and waste places watched those over ruins; but I doubt if they entered cities and nested on the housetops, as they love to do elsewhere, for those people used the house tops themselves. The birds were conspicuous, for they were large, standing nearly three feet, and having a sweep of almost seven feet. They were white, and made a wonderful spectacle on wing as they soared against the blue, purple, and red skies of the Orient, or stood a snowy picture fishing among the rushes of lake margin or river. There was also a black stork, having black on the beak and neck. It was a smaller bird and wilder, keeping more to desert and wilderness places. Soon after arrival they paired and began house-building in the case of young couples mating for the first time, or old birds that found their former nests destroyed. For these birds build one nest, and return to it for generations unless there is an accident. David had watched their nesting and described it in a poem: "The trees of the Lord are satisfied; The cedars of Lebanon, which He hath planted: As for the stork, the fir trees are her house." What a wonderful place Lebanon must have been! No wonder her trees were "satisfied," and that the birds flocked there to nest! It is a happy tree whose branches are upholding a number of beautiful bird homes, whose leaves shelter tender, open-mouthed young, and that makes choir lofts for singers raising an unceasing chorus of pure joy in living and praise of the Almighty. I know the storks nested all over Palestine, from marshes to rocky mountain crags; but David said the "fir trees are her house," and I so love David that I like to picture this bird as at home in the tree that he pointed out in particular as hers. People to-day are inclined to think of the stork as a bird of the house top, and of Holland as its home: but it must be remembered these houses of Bible lands were very different of structure, and the time was in the days when birds were more accustomed to building in trees. So the headwaters of the Jordan, which rises in the mountains of Lebanon, far to the north of Canaan, and over the mountains down to Lake Merom; all over Mt. Hermon, and along the waters of the hill country toward Damascus, were their locations. They especially loved Lebanon. Lebanon with her skies red from the re |