334 GLOSSY IBIS. 



circumstances represented by the Ibis, which seemed like Providence 

 to control them, and was therefore declared the real Providence of 

 Egypt, though merely the concomitant, and by no means the cause of 

 those blessings, by which they profited in common with all. It thus 

 became so identified with the country as to be used as its hieroglyphic 

 representative, and was said to be so attached to its native land that it 

 would die of grief if carried out of it, and it was on account of its 

 fidelity to the soil that it was honored as its emblem. So good a citizen 

 could not of course from selfish motives migrate periodically, and its 

 absence must have been for its country's sake ! Hence the ridiculous 

 tale current throughout antiquity, and strengthened by the testimony 

 of Herodotus, ^Elian, Solinus, Marcellinus, copied by Cicero (who went 

 as far as to assign to the Ibis proper instruments for the purpose, such as 

 a strong bill), by Pliny and others, and credited in our days to a certain 

 extent by Buffon, who thus accounted for the divine honors it received. 

 I allude to the story of their attacking and destroying periodically on 

 the limits of civilization immense flocks of small but most pernicious 

 winged serpents generated by the fermentation of marshes, which without 

 the generous protection afforded by the Ibis would cause the utter ruin 

 of Egypt. 



Still more unaccountable is it that naturalists and philosophers should 

 have been so long in finding out the true meaning of this oriental figure. 

 How could the Ibis with its feeble bill, whose pressure can be hardly 

 felt on the most delicate finger, and which is only calculated for probing 

 in the mud after small mollusca and worms in places just left bare after 

 an inundation, how could such a weapon cut to pieces and destroy so 

 many monsters if they had existed ? How could these learned men 

 (notwithstanding that Herodotus relates his seeing heaps of their bones 

 or spines) believe for an instant in the existence of these winged ser- 

 pents ; and why try to reconcile truth with a barefaced falsehood, or 

 with expressions manifestly figurative ? We are aware that some modern 

 translators of Herodotus, by forcing the Greek original to meet their 

 own views, have attempted to write instead of winged serpents, the word 

 locustce, which insects are known to come in vast swarms, causing 

 periodically great devastation even in some parts of Europe. But 

 nothing is gained by this plausible and apparently learned supposition, 

 since the conformation of the Ibis would prevent it from making any 

 havoc among these enemies, whose being winged would not moreover 

 save their author from the difficulty, locusts having certainly neither 

 bones nor spines. The figure intended is still plainer, and Savigny, 

 who first pointed it out, could in my opinion have saved himself many 

 a page of his classical dissertation, and without any recourse to the idea 

 of the Cerastes, for to me it is evident that by the winged serpents 

 were originally signified the exhalations from the marshes, so noxious 



