the Antient Egyptians. 6$ 



ibis, opened before our time by different naturalifts, had 

 been fimilar to ours. Buffon fays exprefsly that he exa- 

 mined feveral of them ; that the birds they contained had 

 the bill and fize of the curlew 5 and yet he blindly followed 

 Perrault, inconfidering the African tantalus as the ibis. One 

 of the mummies opened by Buffon ftill exifts in the Mu- 

 faeum ; it is fimilar to thofe we have feen. Dr. Shaw, in the 

 Supplement to his Travels*, describes and gives an exact 

 reprefentation of the bones of a fimilar mummy ; the bill, 

 he fays, was fix inches Englilh in length, and refembled 

 that of the curlew, &c. In a word, his description agrees 

 ■entirely with ours. 



Caylus, in his Recueil d'AntiquitcS f, gives the figure of 

 a mummy ibis, the height of which, with its bandages, was 

 only one foot, feven inches, four lines; though he fays ex- 

 prefsly, that the bird was placed in it on its legs, with its 

 head erect, and that no part was bent back in its embalmed 

 {rate. 



Haffelquift, who confidered as the ibis a fmall white and 

 black heron, afligns as his principal reafon for doing fo, that 

 the height of this bird, which is equal to that of the crow, 

 correfponds perfectly with the height of the mummies of 

 the ibis |; how then could Linnaeus give the name of ibis 

 to a bird as large as the ftork; how, in particular, could he 

 confider this bird to be the fame as the ardea ibis of Haf- 

 felquift, which, befides its fmall fize, had a ftraightbill; 

 and how could this laft error, in regard to fynonyms, be ftiH 

 retained in the Syjiema Nature? 



The only figure of the bill of an embalmed ibis, which 

 does not accord with ours, is that given by Edwards §. It is 

 a third larger than it ought to be ; but as it contradicts all 

 the other teftimonies, we muft believe that it was taken 



* Edit, of Oxford, 1746. Plate V. p. 64—66. 



+ Vol. VI. Plate ]X. fig. 1. 



\ Iter Paleftinum, p. 249. Magnetudo gallinae, feu cornicis ; and 

 p. 250, Vafa quae in fepulchris inveniuntur, cum avibus conditis, hujus 

 funt magnitudinis. 



§ Plate 105. 



from 



