SIX months' bird collecting in EGYPT. 11/ 



will be fair to place before my readers all that is to be said 

 in favour of their having been natives, a view hitherto 

 adopted by the majority of naturalists. 



First. We have a representation in Rosselini of young 

 Ibises in a nest of water-plants (Monumenti Civili., Vol. II., 

 plate XIV.) The body of a nestling in the British Museum 

 is white, the head and neck are black and covered with 

 down. This does not tally very well with the plate; my 

 father suggests that they may be young Glossy Ibises.* 



Secondly. Herodotus says they are common and often 

 seen, an expression more likely perhaps to be used of wild 

 birds than tame ones. 



Thirdly. I have found a second species figured in Rosse- 

 lini's " Monuments," supposed to be Gcroiiticiisconiat2ts (Ehr.), 

 which, though never sacred, may, for ought we know, have 

 been once common in Egypt, and now retired further 

 south. If that was so, what happened to the Geronticics 

 may have happened to the Ibis. 



The Sacred Ibis then is^ from past association, an illustri- 

 ous fowl, and so accommodating is it to the gentry and 

 nobility of England, that like Cook's placards, all who go to 

 Egypt see them ; but to the ornithological portion of the 

 community it never reveals itself! The downright nonsense 

 which has been written about the " Sacred bird of Thoth " 

 would fill a book. The hundred and one authors who 

 have raved about Egypt, vie with each other as to who can 

 say the most improbable things about it. Each chronicles 

 the never-to-be-forgotten moment when at last he saw the 

 venerable Ibis of antiquity. One of the fraternity, at a loss 

 for an epithet, dubs it " the pink-eyed Ibis ; " another, with 

 a fine power of imagination, avows that it came nothing 

 short of "a winged star, dazzling in the sunshine." Yet 



• It appears however that the young of that bird is the same colour 

 as the young Sacred Ibis (cf. Zoologist, ss. 15.) 



