i92 Rev. F. W. Hope's Observations 



such animals, when the waters of the Nile decreased, but chiefly 

 perhaps because it was one of the signs of the zodiac, and, like 

 other asterisms, was venerated accordingly. With regard to the 

 above-mentioned insects found in the body of the mummied Ibis, 

 I suspect they were devoured whole by the bird when living, and 

 that it happened to be killed before they were decomposed ; I 

 cannot for a moment think the beetles were separately embalmed, 

 and then placed in the inside of the Ibis. Had the beetles been 

 found in a vase, or together with the bird in cases of wood or 

 stone, or in the envelopes which swathed the sacred animals — in 

 all which states Mr. Pettigrew informs us the Ibis is found — there 

 would have been some reason for thinking that the insects were 

 separately embalmed. I may here add that Baron Cuvier states, 

 that he found in an embalmed Ibis the remains of serpents, of 

 which the skin and scales had not been digested ; and why, I ask, 

 may not undigested insects, as well as relics of reptiUa, be found 

 in the intestines of the Ibis. It is remarkable that the passage 

 which I have quoted from Cuvier is disputed by the learned 

 Savigny, the latter endeavouring to prove that the Ibis does not 

 feed on serpents, deducing his conjectures partly from the struc- 

 ture of the beak and tongue of the Ibis, and from the food of 

 other birds of allied species, which feed on shell-fish, worms, fish, 

 and aquatic insects. I have only here to remark, that the Ibis 

 feeds on insects, terrestrial as well as aquatic, and that I side with 

 Cuvier in preference to Savigny. On referring to Dr. Clarke's 

 Travels for information relating to the Ibis, the following passage 

 will be found, which, with a short comment, will conclude these 

 observations : — " Upon the sands around the city of Rosetta we 

 saw the Scarabceus sacer, or rolling beetle, (as it is sculptured on 

 the obelisks and other monuments of the country,) moving before 

 it a ball of dung, on which it deposits an egg. Among the 

 Egyptian antiquities preserved in the British Museum there is a 

 most colossal figure of this insect. It is placed upon an altar, 

 before whicli a priest is kneeling. The beetle served as food for 

 the Ibis. Its remains are sometimes discovered in the earthen- 

 ware repositories of those embalmed birds which are found at 

 Saccara and Thebes. With the ancients it was a type of the sun, 

 and we often find it among the characters used in hieroglyphic 

 writing. As this insect appears in that season of the year which 

 immediately precedes the inundation of the Nile, it may have 

 been so represented as a symbol of the spring, or of fecundity, 

 or of the Egyptian month anterior to the rising of the water." 

 Now, without entering into a disquisition on the various points 



