120 VOYAGES OF A NATURALIST 



worn that they looked like enormous mushrooms. 

 They were inhabited by noddy terns, which were 

 sitting on their eggs. 



After three hours' steaming, during which we 

 saw many turtles and sharks, we came into very 

 shallow water. The tide was ebbing, and we were 

 forced to take to the dinghy which we had been 

 towing astern. A row of about an hour then 

 brought us to our destination, within half a mile 

 of the place where the ibises were said to be 

 nesting. The ground here was of the same forma- 

 tion as that in the neighbourhood of the settle- 

 ment — a mass of ancient brown-coloured coral 

 covered with long grass and clumps of bushes. 



After a very few minutes' walk we came on a 

 few scattered pairs of Abbott's ibis feeding on the 

 margin of a large pool of rain-water. I soon ob- 

 tained a couple of old birds. Their necks, like 

 those of the sacred ibis, were bare of feathers, 

 and the skin was black and wrinkled ; their eyes 

 were of a pale china-blue. We then came to a 

 more open piece of country, covered with grass 

 and intersected by narrow rivulets of Avater, in 

 one of which were two young ibises. They were 

 ridiculously tame, and allowed of such a near 

 approach that several photographs of them were 

 taken without any difficulty. 



In a clump of fig trees, shortly afterwards 

 reached, the ibises were very numerous ; many 

 were perched in the trees, while many more. 



