SIX MONTHS’ BIRD COLLECTING IN EGYPT. 117 
will be fair to place before my readers all that is to be said 
in favour of their having been natives, a view hitherto 
adopted by the majority of naturalists. 
First. We have a representation in Rosselini of young 
Thises in a nest of water-plants (Monumenti Civili, Vol. IL, 
plate XIV.) The body of a nestling in the British Museum 
is white, the head and neck are black and covered with 
down. This does not tally very well with the plate; my 
father suggests that they may be young Glossy Ibises.* 
Secondly. Herodotus says they are common and often 
seen, an expression more likely perhaps to be used of wild 
birds than tame ones. 
Thirdly. I have found a second species figured in Rosse- 
lini’s “ Monuments,” supposed to be Geronticus comatus (Ehr.), 
which, though never sacred, may, for ought we know, have 
been once common in Egypt, and now retired further 
south. If that was so, what happened to the Geronticus 
may have happened to the Ibis, 
The Sacred Ibis then is, from past association, an illustri- 
ous fowl, and so accommodating is it to the gentry and 
nobility of England, that like Cook’s placards, all who go to 
Egypt see them; but to the ornithological portion of the 
community zt never reveals itself! The downright nonsense 
which has been written about the “Sacred bird of Thoth” 
would fill a book. The hundred and one authors who 
have raved about Egypt, vie with each other as to who can 
say the most improbable things about it. Each chronicles 
the never-to-be-forgotten moment when at last he saw the 
venerable Ibis of antiquity. One of the fraternity, at a loss 
for an epithet, dubs it “the pink-eyed Ibis;” another, with 
a fine power of imagination, avows that it came nothing 
short of “a winged star, dazzling in the sunshine.” Yet 
® It appears however that the young of that bird is the same colour 
as the young Sacred Ibis (cf. Zoologist, ss. 15.) 
