APPENDIX 



DISCOURSE ON THE REVOLUTIONS OF THE SURFACE 

 OF THE GLOBE. 



DESCRIPTION OF THE BIRD CALLED THE IEIS BY THE 

 ANCIENT EGYPTIANS. 



Every one has heard of the Ibis, the bird to which the ancient Egypti- 

 ans paid religious worship ; which they brought up in the interior of 

 their temples, which they allowed to stray unharmed through their 

 cities, and whose murderer, even though involuntary, was punished by 

 death * ; which they embalmed with as mnch care as their own 

 parents. To this bird was attributed a virgin purity ; an inviolable 

 attachment to their country, of which they were made the emblem — 

 an attachment of such force, that they would die with huuger, if re- 

 moved elsewhere ; a bird which possessed sufficient instinct to know 

 the increase and wane of the moon, and regulated accordingly the 

 quantity of its daily nourishment, and the development of its young; 

 which checked, at the very frontiers of Egypt, the serpents which 

 would have carried destruction into this sacred landf, and inspired 

 them with so much terror, that they even feared their feathers^: ; this 

 bird, whose form the gods themselves would have assumed, if compelled 

 to adopt a mortal shape, and into which Mercury was really transformed 

 when he desired to travel over the earth, and teach men the arts and 

 sciences. 



Not any other animal could be as easily recognizable as this one ; 

 for there is no other of which the ancients have left us, as they have of 

 the ibis, such admirable descriptions, figures so exact and even co- 

 loured, and the body itself carefully preserved with its feathers under 

 the triple covering of a bituminous preservation of thick linen, in 

 many folds, and in vessels solid and highly varnished. 



And yet, of all modern writers who have spoken of the ibis, Bruce 

 alone — a traveller more celebrated for his courage, than the accuracy 

 of his notions on natural history — has not been in error regarding the 



* Herod. 1, 2. 



t iEliaD, lib. 2, c. xxxv and xxxviii. 

 + Ibid, lib. xxxviiii. 



