Chap. 41.] MEDICINAL EEMEDIES OF ANIMALS. 291 



our instructor in one of the operations of medicine.* When 

 the animal has become too bulky by continued over-feeding, 

 it goes down to the banks of the river, and examines the 

 reeds which have been newly cut ; as soon as it has found a 

 stump that is very sharp, it presses its body against it, and 

 so wounds one of the veins in the thigh ; and, by the flow of 

 blood thus produced, the body, which would otherwise have 

 fallen into a morbid state, is relieved ; after which, it covers 

 up the wound with mud. 



CHAP. 41. (27.) THE MEDICINAL REMEDIES WHICH HAVE BEEN 



BORROWED FROM ANIMALS.^ 



The bird also, which is called the ibis,^ a native of the same 

 countrj' of Egypt, has shewn us some things of a similar 

 natui^e. By means of its hooked b^ak, it laves the body 

 through that part, by which it is especially necessary for 

 health that the residuous food should be discharged. Nor, in- 

 deed, are these the only inventions which have been borrowed 

 from animals, to prove of use to man. The power of the 

 herb dittany, in exti'acting arrows, was first disclosed to us by 

 stags that had been struck by that weapon ; the weapon being 



* Pliny, speaking of the hippopotamus, in B. xxviii. c. 31, styles it, 

 *' the discoverer of the art of letting blood." — B. 



5 Cuvier remarks upon this and the following Chapter, that they are 

 entirely fabulous. The diseases, remedies, and instructions given by the 

 animals are equally imaginary, although Pliny has taken the whole from 

 authors of credit, and it has been repeated by Plutarch, De Iside, and by 

 ^lian, Anim. Xat. B. ii. c. 35, and many others. Ajasson, vol. vi. p. 

 446 ; Lemaire, vol. iii. p. 426. — B. 



^ Cuvier has given an interesting account of the ibis, the opinions en- 

 tertained of it by various travellers and naturalists, and a detail of the 

 examination which he made of two of its mummies, which were brought 

 by Grobert to Paris, from the Avells of Sakhara. These mummies were 

 found to be similar to those previously examined by Buffon, Shaw, and 

 others, and proved the ibis of the ancient Egyptians to have been a species 

 of curlew. This opinion he further supports by a reference to various 

 sculptures and mosaics, where this bird is represented, and he remarks 

 upon the errors into which most travellers and historians have fallen as to 

 it; the only correct account he conceives to be that of the African traveller, 

 Bruce, who describes and figures it under the name of Abou hannes. See 

 the extract in Lemaire, vol. iii. p. 633, et scq., from his Becherches sur les 

 Ossements Fossiles, vol. i. p. 141, et seq. Herodotus gives an account of 

 the ibis, B. i. c. 75, 76, but it is not correct. — B. 



u2 



