300 ON THE IBIS. 



where; a bird which possessed instinct enough 

 to know the increase and waning of the moon, 

 and to regulate accordingly the quantity of its 

 daily food, and the development of its young ; 

 which arrested at the frontiers of Egypt the ser- 

 pents which would otherwise have carried destruc- 

 tion into that sacred land *, and which inspired 

 them with such terror that they dreaded its very 

 feathers f ; a bird, in fine, whose form the gods 

 would have assumed, had they been forced to a- 

 dopt a mortal figure, and into which Mercury 

 was really transformed, when he had a mind to 

 traverse the earth, and instruct men in the sciences 

 and arts. 



No other animal could have been so easy to re- 

 cognize as this ; for there is no other of which the 

 ancients have left us at once, as of the ibis, excel- 

 lent descriptions, accurate and even coloured fi- 

 gures, and the body itself preserved with its fea- 

 thers, under the triple envelope of a preservative 

 bitumen, thick and close folds of linen, and solid 

 and well varnished vases. And yet, of all the 

 modern authors who have spoken of the ibis, there 

 is but one, the celebrated Bruce, a traveller more 

 famous for his courage than for the justness of his 



* jElian, lib. ii. cap. 35 and 38. 

 t Id. lib. i. cap. 38. 



