ON THE IBIS. 303 



much smaller than those of the Tantalus ibis of 

 naturalists ; that they did not much exceed those 

 of the curlew in size, that its beak resembled that 

 of the latter, being only a little shorter in pro- 

 portion to its thickness, and not at all that of the 

 tantalus ; and, lastly, that its plumage was white 

 with the quills marked with black, as the ancients 

 have described it. 



We are therefore convinced, that the bird 

 which the ancient Egyptians embalmed, was by 

 no means the Tantalus ibis of naturalists, that it 

 was smaller, and that it was to be sought for in 

 the curlew genus. We found, after some in- 

 quiries, that the mummies of the ibis which had 

 been opened before by different naturalists, were 

 similar to ours. Buffon says expressly that he ex- 

 amined several of them ; that the birds which 

 they contained had the beak and size of curlews ; 

 and yet he has blindly followed Perrault in ta- 

 king the African tantalus for the ibis. One of 

 those mummies opened by Buffon still exists in 

 the museum ; it is similar to those which we have 

 examined. 



Dr Shaw, in the supplement to his Travels *, 

 describes and figures with care the bones of a si- 

 milar mummy. The beak, he says, was six Eng- 



* Folio edition, Oxford 1?46, pi, v. and pages 64-66- 



