68 Memoir tn the Ibis of 



Haflelquift was acquainted neither with the white nor the 

 black ibis: his ardea ibis, is a fmall heron with a ftraight 

 bill. Linnaeus, in his tenth edition, placed it, very pro- 

 perly, among the herons ; but he was wrong, as I have al- 

 ready faid, in tranfporting it as a fynonym of the genus of 

 the tantalus. 



Maillet, in his Defcription of Egypt*, conjectures that 

 the ibis mav have been a bird peculiar to Egypt, which is 

 called there Pharaoh's capon, and at Aleppo, faphanlacha. 

 It devours ferpents. Some of thefe birds are white, and fome 

 black and white, and it follows, more than a hundred 

 leagues, the caravans which go from Cairo to Mecca, in 

 order that it may feed on the carcafes of the animals killed 

 in the courfe of the journey, while in every other feafon none 

 of them are feen on that route. But he does not confider 

 this conjecture as certain. He even fays that we mud give 

 over attempting to underftand the antients when they fpeak 

 in fuch a manner as if they had wiihed not to be underftood ; 

 and he concludes with obferving that the antients perhaps 

 comprehended, indifcriminately, under the name of ibis, all 

 the birds which were ferviceable to Egypt in freeing it from 

 thofe dangerous reptiles which the climate produces in 

 abundance, fuch as the vulture, falcon, ftork, kite, &.c. 



He was right in not considering his Pharaoh's capon as 

 the ibis; for, though his defcription be very imperfect, and 

 though Buflfon thought he could diftinguiih in it the ibis, it 

 may be readily' feen, as well as by what Pococke fays, that 

 this bird nuifl be carnivorous ; and, indeed, we find by the 

 figure which Bruce has given f, that Pharaoh's capon is 

 nothing elfe than the rachama, or fmall white vulture with 

 black wings, vultur percnopterus, Linn., a bird exceedingly 

 different from that we have proved to be the ibis. 



Pococke fays that it appears, by the defcriptions given of 

 the ibis, and by the figures of it found in the temples of 

 Upper Egypt, that it is a kind of crane. " I have feen," 

 adds he, " a number of thefe birds in the iflands of the 

 Nile; they were, for the moft part, grayifh %.' r Thefe few 



* Part II. p. ; 3 . f Vol. V. p. 191. 



'J French translation of his Travels, umo, Vol. II. p. 53. 



words 



