286 



black with rich purple reflections, forming a plume which covers the tail; a bare patch under the 

 wing rich fleshy red : beak and legs black ; iris dark brown. Total length about 30 inches, culmen 7"0, 

 wing 15-4, tail 6S, tarsus 4'0. 



Adult Female (Khartoum, June). Resembles the male, but the plumes covering the tail are somewhat 

 duller in colour. Culmen 575 inches, wing 14"0, tail 6'0, tarsus 3'5. 



Immature (Transvaal). Head and neck covered with short black and white feathers ; inner secondaries 

 shorter than in the adult, and duller in colour. 



Young {fide Heuglin). " Bill short and stout, but slightly curved, fleshy brown in colour, general plumage 

 dirty white ; head and neck covered with whitish feathers ; sides of the head, crown, hind neck, and 

 sides of the neck smoky brown, with white bases to the feathers ; ends of the tertials dirty greyish 

 brown, the feathers not lax and elongated.'" 



The Sacred Ibis inhabits the greater part of Africa as far south as the Cape of Good Hope, and 

 belonging strictly to the Ethiopean Region can only be included as a straggler within the limits 

 of the area of which I am treating. 



It has been stated by several authors to have occurred in Europe north of the Mediterranean. 

 Pallas (Zoog. It. -A. ii. p. 165) includes, under the name of Numenius ibis, an Ibis as having been 

 met with on the Black Sea and Caspian, though of rare occurrence. The description he gave is 

 that of the African Wood-Ibis, which does not occur further north than Upper Egypt ; but his 

 citations show that the Sacred Ibis was the species to which he refers, and both Von Nordmann 

 and Dr. Radde believe that it was so, while the latter says that the Mahometans in the Talysch 

 Valley know this bird and have a local name for it, from which he infers that it must at some 

 time have occurred there. Temminck in 1840 (I. c.) records it as having been observed and 

 killed in the Morea, and it is stated to have occurred in Turkey, but no recent observers have 

 met with it in those parts. Savigny states that in August or September 1800 he saw it at 

 Damietta, on Lake Menzaleh, and not far from Kafs el Saida, on the left bank of the Nile; but 

 later authors on Egyptian ornithology speak of it as being very rare in Egypt. According to 

 Von Heuglin one, which he himself examined, was shot at Qata, on the Delta, in December 

 1864, at a shooting-party of Prince Halim-Bascha, but he remarks that it is a rare and accidental 

 visitor to Egypt. Mr. E. Cavendish Taylor records (Ibis, 1878, p. 372) the fact that one was shot 

 near Lake Menzaleh in November 1877, and I understand that this specimen passed into the 

 possession of Capt. Shelley and is now in the British Museum. There is nothing to show that 

 it was ever much more than a straggler to Egypt, occurring there towards the end of the summer, 

 yearly, according to Capt. Shelley and Mr. E. Cavendish Taylor, and the thousands of mummies 

 referred to by travellers were probably the remains of birds taken alive in the upper country and 

 kept in the precincts of the temples. Von Heuglin says that during his sojourn in the provinces 

 of Batn-el-Hadjar, Sukot, and Dongola in July and August 1851 he obtained many old birds, and 

 young ones alive in down, which had been hatched there, and he thinks that it nests numerously 

 northwards to Wady-Halfa. Hartmann met with it as far as Der, quite close to the borders of 

 Upper Egypt, but rarely further north. " In Central and Southern Nubia, Takah, Senaar, and 

 Kordofau," he writes, " the Sacred Ibis is only a migrant. Coming from the south it moves on 

 by degrees as the summer rains set in ; thus it appears in Southern Senaar already in May, at 

 Khartoum early in June, at Berber and Dongola rather later. It follows closely on the track of 



