426 GLOSSY IBIS. 
. eminent degree, as I have personally ascertained, notwith- 
standing his statements to the contrary, in making which he 
must have had before him the bill of the tantalus, which he 
mistook for the ibis. These furrows it is of the more conse- 
quence to note, inasmuch as they form the principal discrim- 
ination between the genera Zantalus and Ibis, and serve to 
put an end to a controversy to which the sacred ibis has given 
rise. 
Although every traveller in Egypt has used his exertions 
to collect all the facts relative to a bird which plays such a 
part in the sacred legends of that country, a bird associated 
with so many of the wonders of antiquity, yet it was for a long 
period a question among naturalists and scholars to what 
species the name of ibis was properly to be applied. As, 
however, contrary to the general practice of the ancients, the 
description of the bird did exist, and even a representation, 
tolerably good, among their sculptured hieroglyphics, it could 
only be because it was supposed that divine honours must 
have been the reward of signal service that any dispute could 
ever arise on the subject. A sacred bird must of course, it 
was concluded, be a great destroyer of venomous animals, 
which the timid ibis 7s not; hence the misapplication of the 
name. ‘To such an extent did this idea prevail, and predomi- 
nate over all others, that Buffon, who could only feel contempt 
for the idle tales related of the ibis, so involved their true 
history as to attribute to them the most violent antipathy to 
serpents, on which he supposed they fed, and destroyed them 
by all possible means, and assigns to them the habits of a 
species of vulture. Others maintained, notwithstanding its 
long and faleate bill, that it was in fact a vulture, which was 
indeed the most natural conclusion after they had begun by 
giving it such habits. Cuvier himself, who cleared up and 
rectified everything else in relation to the ibis, because he 
found in a mummy some skins and scales of serpents, most 
probably embalmed as companions, which was frequently done 
with different kinds of animals, declared it a true snake-eater. 
