ON THE IBIS. 159 



Egyptians was certainly not the tantalus ibis of naturalists ; that it 

 was smaller, and that it must be of the curlew genus. 



We learnt, after some research, that the ibis mummies opened be- 

 fore by other naturalists were similar to our own. BufFon expressly 

 says, that he had examined many ; that the birds they contained had 

 the beak and size of curlews, and yet he blindly follows Perrault, in 

 taking the tantalus of Africa for the ibis. 



One of these mummies opened by BufFon is still in the Museum, 

 and is similar to those which we have opened. 



Dr. Shaw in the supplement to his travels (fol. edit. Oxford, 1746, 

 plate 5, pp. 64 to 66), describes and depicts with care the bones of a 

 similar mummy ; the beak, he says, was six English inches in length, 

 like that of the curlew, &c. In a word, his account exactly tallies with 

 our own examination. 



Caylus (Recueil d'Antiquites, vol. vi. pi. 11, fig. 1), represents the 

 mummy ibis as only one foot seven inches high, including its ban- 

 dages, although he expressly says, that the bird was then placed on its 

 feet, with the head erect, and that no part of it had been bent in the 

 embalming. 



Hasselquist, who took a small black and white heron for the ibis, 

 gives as his principal reason, that the size of this bird, which is that of 

 a crow, corresponds very well with the size of the mummies of the 

 ibis*. How then could Linnaeus give the name of ibis to a bird as 

 large as a stork? How indeed could he consider this bird as the same 

 with the ardca ibis of Hasselquist, which, besides its smallness, had a 

 straight beak? And how could this latter error of synomy have been 

 perpetuated in the Systema Natures, down to the present time ? 



A short time after the examination made with M. Fourcroy, M. 

 Olivier, had the complaisance to show us some bones which he had 

 brought from two mummies of the ibis; and to open two others with 

 us. The bones there found resembled those of the mummies of 

 Colonel Grobert, only one of the four was smaller, but it was easy to 

 judge by the epiphyses, that it had belonged to a young individual. 



The only drawing of the beak of an embalmed ibis, which does not 

 entirely agree with those which we examined, was that of Edwards 

 (plate cv) ; it is a ninth larger, and yet we do not question its accuracy ; 

 for M. Olivier shewed us also the length, an eighth or ninth longer 

 than the others, in proportion of 180 to 165 equally taken from a 

 mummy. 



This beak only shows that there were among the ibis species, indi- 



* Hasselquist Iter Palestinum, p. 249, magnitude* galiin.se, seu cornicis, and p. 

 250, vasa quae in sepulcris iaveniuntur, cum avibus conditis, hujus sunt magnitudinis 



