ON THE IBIS. 319 



pedition to Egypt, equally asserts his not having 

 seen the Tantalus in that country, but he ob- 

 tained a great number of our Numenlus near 

 the Lake Menzale, in Lower Egypt, and carried 

 their skins with him. 



The Abou-Hannes has been placed by La- 

 tham, in his Index Ornithologicus, under the 

 name of Tantalus ^Ethiopicus ; but he does 

 not speak of Bruce's conjecture respecting its 

 identity with the ibis. The travellers before and 

 after Bruce appear to have all been in error. Be- 

 lon thought that the white ibis was the stork, in 

 which he evidently contradicted all testimony on 

 that head. No person has adopted his opinion 

 in this matter, excepting the apothecaries, who 

 have taken the stork for an emblem, because they 

 have confounded it with the ibis, to which the 

 invention of clysters is attributed *. 



Prosper Alpinus, who relates that this inven- 

 tion is due to the ibis, gives no description of 

 this bird in his Medicine of the Egyptians^ . In 

 his Natural History of Egypt, he speaks of it 

 only after Herodotus, to whose account he only 

 adds, without doubt from a passage of Strabo, 



, lib. ii. cap. xxxv ; Plut. De Solert. An. ; Cic. 

 de Nat. Deor. lib. ii. ; Phil, de Anim. prop. 16. &c. 



t De Med. Mgypt. lib. i. fol. i* vers. Paris Edition, 

 1646. 3 



