CROCODILUS NILOTICUS. 23 
half a mile ! The improbability of any bird coming out alive from the closed mouth 
of a crocodile is so great, and the proceeding on the part of the bird itself, as recorded 
by Mr. Cook, so meaningless (as it would be impossible for it to feed when the mouth 
was shut), that the observation cannot be accepted as reliable. 
One way in which the birds that have been mentioned, but especially //. spinosus 
and P. cegyptius, are unquestionably useful to the crocodile, is testified to by ^Elian ', 
and by every sportsman on the Nile, for no sooner is a man detected approaching 
than these birds utter their clear notes, thus warning the crocodile of impending 
danger. 
Now that the Nile above Wadi Haifa, where crocodiles abound, has once' more been 
thrown open to Europeans, it is to be hoped that some one interested in the habits of 
animals may find out what species of birds associate with the crocodile, how they 
comport themselves to it, and what service, if any, they render to it 2 . 
Brehm 3 , Heuglin 4 , Dresser 5 , and others have said that Pluvianus cegyptius is U in 
the hieroglyphic alphabet of the Egyptians, and it is even stated that the Egyptians of 
old were well acquainted with it, and that it frequently occurs on wall-paintings. I 
have gone carefully through the literature bearing on the wall-paintings of Egypt, 
but I have not been able to find a single representation of Pluvianus mgyptius. The U 
of the alphabet is unquestionably a newly-fledged domestic chicken, a most important 
bird with the Egyptians, who, then as now, largely if not exclusively brought all their 
poultry to life by artificial incubation. The wings devoid of quills, the absence of 
tail-feathers, and the generally imperfect character of the feathering of the bird of the 
hieroglyph U are all distinctive of a bird that has just left the egg. By some 
Egyptologists I believe the figure has been taken for a quail. 
The great Jtoman satirist s says : — " Who does not know what kinds of monsters 
elemented Egypt worships 1 One part adores the crocodile, another quakes before the 
ibis gorged with serpents . . , . whole houses venerate cats, here a river-fish, and there 
a dog " . . . . This animal-worship in Egypt shows traces of a savage ancestry that goes 
back to a period long ages before the construction of the oldest monuments of the Nile 
valley, to the days when the groups of prehistoric men dotted along the banks of the 
1 Op. rit. viii. 25. 
2 Additional literature bearing on this subject : — 
Brehm, Journ. f. Ornith. 1856, p. 491 ; E. C. Taylor, Ibis, 1859, p. 52, 1867, p. 68 ; S. S. Allen, Ibis, 
1863, p. 156 ; Gould's ' Birds of Asia,' vii. 1865, article Pluvianus cegyptius ; J. H. Gurney, jun., ' Rambles of 
a Naturalist in Egypt, &c.,' 1876, p. 198 ; Dresser's ' Birds of Europe,' vii. 1 878, p. 522 & p. 542 ; Klunzinger, 
' Upper Egypt,' 1878, p. 150 ; D'Aubusson, ' Ecbassiers d'Egypte,' p. 16 ; ' Dictionary of Birds,' Newton & 
Gadow, pt. iii. 1894, p. 733 footnote. 
3 Thierleben, Vdgel, iii. 2nd ed. p. 266. " Ornith. Nordost-Afr. p. 978. 
5 Birds of Europe, vii. p. 523. 
6 Juvenal, Sat. xv. 1. 
