134 Proceedings of the British Association. 



ture Mr. Burton could not, from his own observation, determine. From 

 the accounts of the Arabs, however, it was presumed that these nests 

 had been occupied by remarkable large birds of the stork kind, which 

 had deserted the coast but a short time previous to Mr. Burton's visit. 

 To these facts," said Mr. Bonomi, "I beg to, add the following 

 remarks : — Among the most ancient records of the primeval civiliza- 

 tion of the human race that have come down to us, there is described, 

 in the language the most universally intelligible, a gigantic stork 

 bearing, with respect to a man of ordinary dimensions, the proportions 

 exhibited in the drawing before you, which is faithfully copied from 

 the original document. It is a bird of white plumage, straight and 

 large beak, long feathers in the tail ; the male bird has a tuft at the 

 back of the head, and another at the breast : its habits apparently 

 gregarious. This very remarkable painted basso-relievo is sculptured 

 on the wall, in the tomb of an officer of the household of Pharaoh 

 Shufu (the Suphis of the Greeks), a monarch of the fourth dynasty, 

 who reigned over Egypt, while yet a great part of the Delta was in- 

 tersected by lakes overgrown with the papyrus, — while yet the smaller 

 ramifications of the parent stream were inhabited by the crocodile 

 and hippopotamus, — while yet, as it would seem, that favoured land 

 had not been visited by calamity, nor the arts of peace disturbed by 

 war, so the sculpture in these tombs intimate, for their is neither 

 horse nor instrument of war in any one of these tombs. At that 

 period, the period of the building of the Great Pyramid, which, 

 according to some writers on Egyptian matters, was in the year 

 2100 b. c. which, on good authority, is the 240th year of the Deluge, 

 this gigantic stork was an inhabitant of the Delta, or its immediate 

 vicinity; for as these very interesting documents relate, it was oc- 

 casionally entrapped by the peasantry of the Delta, and brought with 

 other wild animals as matters of curiosity to the great landholders or 

 farmers of the products of the Nile, — of which circumstance this 

 painted sculpture is a representation, the catching of fish and birds, 

 which in these days occupied a large portion of the inhabitants. 

 The birds and fish were salted. That this document gives no 

 exaggerated account of the bird, may be presumed from the just 

 proportion that the quadrupeds, in the same picture, bear to 

 the men who are leading them ; and, from the absence of any repre- 





