IBISES 



317 



conclude that it was soon domesticated, and bred freely. Moreover, like the black- 

 headed ibis of India, which usually lays from four to five eggs, we can easily 

 suppose that the numbers rapidly increased. On the contrary, when its protectors 

 vanished from the land, so did the ibis." This species now breeds in the Upper 

 Nile, in Nubia, and the Sudan, as it does in Abyssinia, and it extends through the 

 continent to the Cape, where it is, however, of rare occurrence. It is essentially a 

 water-loving species, and, like its Indian cousins, may be met with in small or 

 moderate-sized flocks on the margins of rivers or lakes, or in the flooded rice-fields, 



THE SACKED IBIS (| nat. size). 



where it wanders in search of the molluscs, insects, crustaceans, and worms, which 

 constitute its chief food. The flesh has a fishy taste, which renders it quite 

 uneatable to Europeans. In the lore of Ancient Egypt the ibis was the emblem of 

 Thoth, the secretary of Osiris, and was consequently held in the greatest venera- 

 tion, as is proved by the numbers of its mummified remains found in the temples. 

 At what date it disappeared from Egypt is unknown, but it remained at the 

 conquest of the country by the Romans, by whom it was introduced into Italy. 

 Among the other genera of the subfamily w^e may first refer to the warty-headed 

 or black ibis {Geronticus papillosus) of India, and the bald-headed ibis (G. calvus) 

 of South Africa, as well-known representatives of an Old World genus dis- 



