424 GLOSSY IBIS. 
a present from Osiris to Isis, or the fertilised soil, and as such 
was carefully brought up in the temples, those first menageries 
of antiquity. It was forbidden under pain of severest punish- 
ment to kill or injure in the least these sacred beings, and 
their dead bodies even were carefully preserved in order to 
secure eternity for them. It is well known with what art the 
Eeyptians endeavoured to eternise death, notwithstanding the 
manifest will of Nature that we should be rid of its dreaded 
images, and that many animals held sacred shared with man 
himself in these posthumous honours. In the Soccora plains 
many wells containing mummies are rightly called birds’ wells, 
on account of the embalmed birds, generally of the ibis kind, 
which they contain. ‘These are found enclosed in long jars of 
baked earth, whose opening is hermetically closed with cement, 
so that it is necessary to break them to extract the mummy. 
Buffon obtained several of these jars, in each of which there 
was a kind of doll enveloped in wrappers of linen cloth, and 
when these were removed, the body fell in a blackish dust, 
but the bones and feathers retained more consistence, and 
could be readily recognised. Dr Pearson, who received some 
of these jars from Thebes, gives a more minute description, 
as does also Savigny. E. Geoffroy, and Grobert, also brought 
from Egypt some very perfect embalmed ibises, and I have 
availed myself of every opportunity to examine such as were 
within my reach, and especially those preserved in the Kir- 
cherian Museum at Rome, one of which, containing a most 
perfect skeleton, is now before me. 
By far the greater part of the jars contain nothing but a 
kind of fat black earth, resulting from the decomposition of 
the entrails and other soft parts buried exclusively in them. 
Each bird is enclosed in a small earthen jar with a cover used 
for the purpose. The body is wrapped up in several layers 
of cloth, about three inches broad, saturated with some resin- 
ous substance, besides a quantity of other layers fixed in their 
place by a great many turns of thread crossed with much art, 
so much, indeed, that it is by no means easy to lay the parts 
