168 ON THB IBIS. 



The abouhannes has been placed by M. Latham in his Index Ornitho- 

 logicus, under the name of tantalus JEthiopicus ,• but he makes no 

 mention of the conjecture of Bruce on its identity with the ibis. 



Travellers before and after Bruce appear to have all been in error. 



Belon thought that the white ibis was the stork, thereby evidently 

 contradicting all testimonies ; and none have been of his opinion except 

 the apothecaries, who took the stork for an emblem, confounding it 

 with the ibis to M'hom they attributed the invention of clysters *. 



Prosper Alpinus, who relates that this invention was due to the ibis, 

 gives no description of this bird in his medicine of the Egyptians f. 

 In his Natural History of Egypt, he only speaks of it from Herodotus, 

 to whose words he only adds, doubtless after a passage of Strabo, to 

 which I shall recur presently, that this bird resembles the stork in size 

 and figure. He says, that he was told that they were found in abun- 

 dance, both white and black, on the banks of the Nile ; but it is evident 

 by his expressions, that he did not think they had been seen +. 



Shaw says of the ibis §, that it is now excessively rare, and that he 

 had never seen one. His emseesy, or ox-bird, which Gmelin very im- 

 properly makes to correspond with the tantalus ibis, is the size of the 

 curlew, white bodied and with red beak and feet. It is found in the 

 fields near cattle ; its flesh is not well flavoured, and soon.decays ||. It 

 is easy to perceive that it is not the tantalus, and still less the ibis of 

 the ancients. 



Hasselquist neither knew the white ibis, nor the black ibis ; his 

 ardea ibis is a small heron with a straight beak. Linnaeus (tenth 

 edition), has correctly placed it amongst the heron tribe ; buttle was 

 in error, as I have already remarked, in afterwards removing it as 

 synonymous with the tantalus genus. 



De Maillet (Descrip. de l'Egypte, part 2, p. 23), conjectures that 

 the ibis may be a bird peculiar to Egypt, and which is there called 

 Pharaoh's fowl (chapon de Pharaoh), and at Aleppo Saphan-bacha. It 

 devours serpents. There are a black and white species, and it follows, 

 for more than a hundred leagues, the caravans going from Cairo to 

 Meccca, to feed on the carcasses of the animals which are killed on 

 the journey, whilst at any other season not one of them is to be seen 

 on this route. But the author does not consider this as certain ; he 



* ^Elian, lib. ii, cap. xxxv. Phil, de Solest. An. Cic. de Nat. Deor. lib. ii. Pb.il. de 

 Anim. Prop. 16 etc. 



f De Med. ^Egypt. lib. i, fol. v. i. Ed. Paris, 1646. 



X Recherehes Egypt, lib. iv., cap. i, vol. i, p. 199, of the Leyden edit. 1735. 



§ See French translation, v. ii. p. 167. 



|| See Shaw's French translation, vol. 1, p. 330. 



