316 HISTORY OF 



CHAP. IV. 



OF THE BALEARIC AND OTHER FOREIGN CRANES. 



Having ended the last chapter with doubts concerning tha 

 bis, we shall begin this with doubts concerning the Balearic 



tion was definitively settled by a careful anatomical comparison of the ancient 

 mummies and recent specimens then brought home by Geoffroy-Saint-Hi- 

 laire and Savigny. From the examination of these materials M. Cuvier 

 was enabled to verify Bruce's assertion, and to restore to science a bird 

 which, after having formed for centuries the object of a nation's adoration, 

 had fallen into oblivion, and was wholly unknown to modern naturalists. 

 At the same time he pointed out those distinctive characters on which M. 

 I/acepede founded the genus ibis, formally established by M. Cuvier himself 

 in the first edition of his Uegne Animal. 



The ibis genus is characterized by a long and slender bill, nearly square 

 at its base, where it is of less breadth than the head, almost straight for 

 about one half of its length, and having the remaining part gradually curved 

 downwards, blunt at its point and without any notch ; nostrils situated near 

 the base of the bill at the commencement of a grove which is continued 

 along each side of its upper surface as far as to its point ; the head, and 

 sometimes the neck, devoid of feathers to an extent varying in the different 

 races ; wings of moderate length ; tarsi slender ; and toes webbed at the 

 base, the hinder one placed somewhat above the level of the others but be- 

 ing of sufficient length to rest ui)on the earth. In many of these characters 

 we observe a considerable deviation from those of the Storks and other ty- 

 pical examples of the family with which the ibis is associated, and a marked 

 approach to the Curlews, From the natural habits and organization of the 

 ibis, confirmed by analogy, and fiu-ther corroborated by the testimony of 

 the modern Egyptians, it does not appear that it feeds upon reptiles. We 

 must, then, look for other reasons than the destruction of serpents, for the 

 veneration paid to the ibis by the ancient Egyptians, who admitted it even 

 into their temples, and prohibited the killing of it, under pain of death. In 

 a country, where the people, very ignorant, were governed only by super- 

 stitious ideas, it was natural that fictions should have been imagined, to 

 express with energy the happy influences of that phenomenon which every 

 year attracts the ibis into Egypt., and retains it there. Its constant presence 

 at the epoch of that inundation, which annually triumphs over all the sour- 

 ces of decay, and assiu-es the fertility of the soil, must have appeared to the 

 priests and the persons at the head of government admirably calculated to 

 make a lively impression on the minds of the people, to lead them to suppose 

 supernatural and secret relations between the movements of the Nile and 

 the sojourn of these inoffensive birds, and to consider the latter as the cause 

 of effects exclusively owing to the overflow of the river. 



Besides the white and black ibis, another ibis, entirely black, was equally 

 reverenced in Egypt, and embalmed in a similar manner. This one is more 

 elegant and slender than the other in its external form, and its internal or 



