GLOSSY IBIS. 335 



in Egypt wlien brought by the south-easterly or Typhonian winds 

 against which the Ibis was observed to direct its flight and to conquer, 

 aided, it is true, by the powerful sweeping Etherian winds. 



Be this as it may, no animal was more venerated by the Egyptians 

 than the Ibis : there was none whose history was more encumbered with 

 fictions. Notwithstanding the ridicule thrown upon it by Aristotle, 

 tlie Ibis was believed to be so essentially pure and chaste, as to be in- 

 capable of any immodest act. The priests declared the water to be 

 only fit for ablutions and religious purposes when the Ibis had deigned 

 to drink of it. Yet by some unaccountable contradiction Roman authors 

 made of it an unclean animal. It is needless here to repeat all the 

 fanciful and extravagant things said of the Ibis among a people whose 

 credulity, superstition, and wildness of imagination knew no bounds. 

 It was represented by the priests as a present from Osiris to Isis, or 

 the fertilized soil, and as such was carefully brought up in the temples, 

 those first menageries of antiquity. It was forbidden under pain of 

 severest punishment to kill or injure in the least these sacred beings, 

 and their dead bodies even were carefully preserved in order to secure 

 eternity for them. It is well known with what art the Egyptians endea- 

 vored to eternize death, notwithstanding the manifest will of nature that 

 we should be rid of its dreaded images, and that many animals held sacred 

 shared with man himself in these posthumous honors. In the Soccora 

 plains many wells containing mummies are rightly called birds' wells, on 

 account of the embalmed birds, generally of the Ibis kind, which they 

 contain. These are found enclosed in long jars of baked earth, whose 

 opening is hermetically closed with cement, so that it is necessary to 

 break them to extract the mummy. Buffon obtained several of these 

 jars, in each of which there was a kind of doll enveloped in wrappers 

 of linen cloth, and when these were removed the body fell in a blackish 

 dust, but the bones and feathers retained more consistence, and could 

 be readily recognised. Dr. Pearson, who received some of these jars 

 from Thebes, gives a more minute description, as does also Savigny. 

 E. Geoffrey, and Grobert, also brought from Egypt some very perfect 

 embalmed Ibises, and I have availed myself of every opportunity to 

 examine such as were within my reach, and especially those preserved 

 in the Kircherian Museum at Rome, one of which, containing a most 

 perfect skeleton, is now before me. 



By far the greater part of the jars contain nothing but a kind of 

 fat black earth, resulting from the decomposition of the entrails and 

 other soft parts buried exclusively in them. Each bird is enclosed in a 

 small earthen jar with a cover used for the purpose. The body is 

 wrapped up in several layers of cloth, about three inches broad, satu- 

 rated with some resinous substance, besides a quantity of other layers 

 fixed in their place by a great many turns of thread crossed with much 



