CHAPTER VI. 
I SHOULD now like to say something about a bird on which 
a special interest centres in connection with Egypt, because 
in old days the pagan dwellers in that land worshipped it,— 
the Ibis (Jbis ethiopica, Lath., I. religiosa, auct.) What 
they saw in this fowl to make it one of the objects of their 
veneration is a vexed question. Some content themselves 
with saying that it was so; some jump to the conclusion 
that it was a deadly foe to noxious reptiles; some quote 
the plausible Plutarch, who gives three highly recondite 
reasons, viz., that its black and white plumage resembled 
the moon’s gibbosity, that the space between its legs formed ~~ ~~ 
an equilateral triangle, and that it was supposed to make a 
medicinal use of its beak ! 
Alas! alas! the Sacred Ibis is no longer found in Egypt. 
What would the shaven priests say if they could live 
over again? My humble opinion is that they would 
say that in their wild state they never were anything but 
rarities, and confirm the theory of Dr. Adams (Ibis, 1864, 
p. 32,) that they were imported from the south. I look 
upon them as an imported exotic, for I cannot conjecture 
what natural cause can have operated upon them to produce 
their extinction, if they ever were natives, They were 
domesticated, in time they became totally dependent on 
man, Egypt was conquered by another nation, the hand of 
protection was withdrawn, and the breed died out.* But it 
© The great men who wrote so many reams of paper about its my- 
thological history, never seem to have known that it was extinct or 
moribund. 
