IBIS 455 



mediate districts, in a way not unknown elsewhere among migratory- 

 birds. In Lower Egypt it bears the name of Ahou-mengel, or 

 " Father of the Sickle," from the form of its bill, but it does not 

 stay long in that country, disappearing by ail accounts when the 

 inundation has subsided. Hence doubtless arises the fact that 

 almost all European travellers have failed to meet with it there,^ 

 since their acquaintance with the birds of Egypt is mostly limited 

 to those Avhich frequent the country in winter, and consequently 

 writers have not been wanting to deny to this species a place in its 

 modern fauna (c/. Shelley, B. Egypt, p. 261); but, in December 

 1864, Von Heuglin (Journ. fur Orn. 1865, p. 100) saw a young 

 bird Avhich had been shot at Gata in the delta, and subsequently 

 Mr. E. C. Taylor {lUs, 1878, p. 372) saw an adult which had been 

 killed near Lake Menzaleh in November 1877. The old story 

 told to Herodotus of its destroying snakes is, according to Savigny, 

 devoid of truth,^ and that naturalist found, from dissection of the 

 examples he obtained, that its usual food was fresh-water univalve 

 moUusks ; but Cuvier asserts that he discovered partly-digested 

 remains of a snake in the stomach of a mummied Ibis which he 

 examined, and there can be little doubt that insects and crustaceans, 

 to say nothing of other living creatures, enter on occasion into the 

 bird's diet. 



The Ibis is somewhat larger than a Curlew, Numenius arquafa, 

 which bird it in appearance calls to mind, with a much stouter bill 

 and stouter legs. The head and greater part of the neck are bare 

 and black. The plumage is white, except the primaries which are 

 black, and a black plume, richly glossed with bronze, blue and 

 green, which curves gracefully over the hind-quarters. The bill 

 and feet are also black. The young lack the ornamental plume, 

 and in them the head and neck are clothed with short black 

 feathers, while the bill is yellow. The nest is placed in bushes or 

 high trees, the bird generally building in companies, and in the 

 middle of August Von Heuglin (Orn. Nordost-Afrika's, p. 1138) 

 found that it had from two to four young or much incubated eggs.^ 

 These are of a dingy white, splashed, spotted, and speckled with 

 reddish-brown. 



Congeneric with the typical Ibis are two or three other species, 



^ Mr. E. C. Taylor remarked some years ago {Ibis, 1859, p. 51), that the 

 Buft'-backed Heron, Ardea bubulcus, was made by the tourists' dragomans to do 

 duty for the "Sacred Ibis," and this seems to be no novel practice, since by it, 

 or something like it, Hasselqvist was misled, and through him Linnaeus. 



- The suggestion that the ' ' flying serpents " whose remains were seen by 

 Herodotus [Eut. 75) were locusts is perhaps plausible, but there is considerable 

 diflBculty in accepting it. 



^ The Ibis has more than once nested in the gardens of the Zoological Society, 

 and even reared its young there {Ibis, 1878, pp. 449-451, pi. xii.) 



