CHAPTER VI. 



I SHOULD now like to say something about a bird on which 

 a special interest centres in connection with Egypt, because 

 in old days the pagan dwellers in that land worshipped it, — 

 the Ibis (Ibis cethiopica, Lath., /. religiosa, auct.) What 

 they saw in this fowl to make it one of the objects of their 

 veneration is a vexed question. Some content themselves 

 with saying that it was so; some jump to the conclusion 

 that it was a deadly foe to noxious reptiles ; some quote 

 the plausible Plutarch, who gives three highly recondite 

 reasons, viz., that its black and white plumage resembled 

 the moon's gibbosity, that the space between its legs formed 

 an equilateral triangle, and that it was supposed to make a 

 medicinal use of its beak ! 



Alas ! alas ! the Sacred Ibis is no longer found in Egypt. 

 What would the shaven priests say if they could live 

 over again "l My humble opinion is that they would 

 say that in their wild state they never were anything but 

 rarities, and confirm the theory of Dr. Adams (Ibis, 1864, 

 p. 32,) that they were imported from the south, I look 

 upon them as an imported exotic, for I cannot conjecture 

 what natural cause can have operated upon them to produce 

 their extinction, if they ever were natives. They were 

 domesticated, in time they became totally dependent on 

 man, Egypt was conquered by another nation, the hand of 

 protection was withdrawn, and the breed died out* But it 



* The great men who wrote so many reams of paper about its my- 

 thological history, never seem to have known that it was extinct or 

 moribund. 



