They wend their migratory way northward, these storks, from the interior of Africa near the sources of the Nile, and make their appearance in Holland contemporaneous with the first signs of approaching spring. Their coming is regarded as a veritable Godsend by the Netherlander and the various Dutch journals feature the “stories” of first reported arrivals, and devote to them an amount of space commensurate with the importance of the event, while any decrease in the numbers of the birds is quickly observed and promptly linotyped. When the storks, so high in the air that they appear as mere specks, approach the familiar scenes and nesting places of previous summers, they descend to the earth in pairs to hunt about for their old abodes. Having finally discovered these, a deal of repairing will have to be done to render them once more habitable. Both the male and the female labor with a great deal of energy and no little resourcefulness in the reconstruction of the old nest, collecting sticks and twigs, and weaving them together with much mathematical precision. Endowed with no vocal power of calling each other or criticising their work, their silence while at the task is punctuated only with a comical snapping of bill and a suggestive flapping of wings. If a certain pair has been a little premature, perhaps, and chosen, not always by mistake, another pair’s nest, the ensuing imbroglio often results in such a complete destruction of the point at issue that both pairs instead of one must build anew. The story of the “Stork’s Judgment” is one of the best known among the Dutch with regard to these birds. It is that in the fall, prior to the departure of the storks for southern climes, all the old and decrepit ones, too weakly to stand the long trip, are killed off so that the general migration may not be delayed or impeded. Another belief held by the Hollander, more or less a child of the imagination but not without at least a tinge of fact, is that among the stork communities a certain number of picked birds are detailed each season to act in the capacity of a regular police force to preserve the peace and protect the interests of the colony at large. A stork’s nest on the roof serves, according to the superstitions of many Dutch farmers, as a prevention to the ravages of lightning and the contraction of contagious diseases by their families. Misfortune in some form or other is sure to follow if the stork does not see fit to nest somewhere near the house, and simply because of this, land holders have been known to pack up, bag, baggage, and agricultural implements, and move into another district. XIII THE HINTERLAND OF HOLLAND If Friesland be considered the frontier of Holland’s tourist territory, the provinces of Groningen, Drenthe, and Over-Yssel certainly constitute its hinterland.