302 ON THE IBIS. 



ffon #, and the Tantalus Ibis of Linnaeus, in his 

 twelfth edition. It was to this same bird, also, that 

 Blumenbach, while he avowed that it is of very rare 

 occurrence at the present day, at least in Lower 

 Egypt, asserted that the Egyptians rendered di- 

 vine honours -f- ; and yet this naturalist had pos- 

 sessed opportunities of examining bones of the 

 true ibis in a mummy which he opened in Lon- 

 don J. 



I also participated in the error of those cele- 

 brated men whom I have just mentioned, until 

 the moment when I was enabled to examine some 

 mummies of the ibis by myself. This pleasure 

 was procured for me, for the first time, by the late 

 M. Fourcroy, to whom M. Grobert, Colonel of 

 Artillery, on his return from Egypt, had given 

 two of these mummies, both taken from the pits 

 of Saccara. On carefully exposing them, we per- 

 ceived that the bones of the embalmed bird were 



rantio, pedibus griseis. Ibis Candida, Brisson, Ornithologia, 

 t. v. p. 349, 



* Planches Enluminees, No. 389 ; Histoire des Oiseaux, 

 t, viii. 4to. p. 14. pi, 1, This last figure is a copy of that 

 of Perault, with the same fault, 



t Handbuch der Naturgeschichte, p, 203. of the edition 

 of 1799 ; but in the edition of 1807 he has restored the 

 name of Ibis to the bird to which it belongs. 



J Philosophical Transactions for 1794. 



