ON THE IBIS. 171 



narrow defile, in which an infinite quantity of bones and remains, 

 which he was told were the relics of winged serpents, which sought to 

 penetrate into Egypt at the beginning of spring, and that the ibis 

 stopped their progress ; but he does not say that he witnessed their 

 combats, nor that he had seen these winged serpents in a perfect state. 

 The whole of his testimony consists then in having observed a mass of 

 bones, which might have been those of this multitude of reptiles and 

 other animals which the inundation destroyed every year, and whose 

 carcasses it would naturally convey to the points where it stopped, to 

 the borders of the desert, and which would accumulate more abund- 

 antly in a narrow defile. 



Yet it is in consequence of this idea of the combat of the ibis with 

 the serpents, that Cicero gives a hard and horny beak to this bird *. 

 Having never been in Egypt, he figured to himself that it must be so 

 by analogy. 



I am aware that Strabo says, that some part of the ibis resembles 

 the stork in shape and height f, and that this author ought to have 

 known this well, since he assures us that in his time the streets and 

 crossways of Alexandria were so filled with them, that they were a se- 

 rious inconvenience ; but he spoke from memory. His testimony can- 

 not be received when he contradicts all others, and particularly when 

 the bird itself is there to disprove it. 



Tn like manner I shall not concern myself about a passage of 

 ^Elian J, who states (like the Egyptian enbalmers) that the intestines 

 of the ibis were ninty-six cubits in length. The Egyptian priests of 

 all classes have given such extravagant descriptions of natural history, 

 that we cannot make of much consequence whatever one of the lower 

 order might assert. 



Another objection may be made against me, drawn from the long 

 extending and black feathers which cover the rump of our bird, and of 

 which we detect some traces in the abouhannes of Bruce. 



The ancients, it may be said, say nothing of it in their descriptions 

 and their figures of it do not represent them. But I have, to back my 

 assertion, more than a written testimony or a traced image. I have 

 found precisely similar feathers in one of the mummies of Saccara ; I 

 preserve them most carefully, as being at once a singular monument of 

 antiquity, and a proof undeniable of the identity of the species. These 

 feather* having an uncommon form, and not being found, I believe, in 



* Avis excelsa, cruribus rigidis, corneo proceroque rostro. Cic. de Nat. Doer, 

 lib. i. 



f Strab. lib. xvii. 



X ^Elian, Anim. lib. x, cap. 29. 



