of the Egyptian Ibis. zGg 
from the catacombs at Thebes, in as imperfect and decayed a 
condition as those which have been procured from Saccara. 
I have been favoured with the permission to unroll another 
mummy of the Ibis, also sent from Thebes by Major Haves-, 
which had been embalmed in a different manner from that 
I have already described. The cloth which surrounded it 
was of a coarser texture, and had not been so thoroughly 
imbued with bitumen, nor was the roller continued down to 
the body of the bird ; for, when I had removed as much of the 
bandage as reduced the mummy to about | of its original 
bulk, I found that, instead of circular bands, it was wrapped in 
several different portions of coarse linen cloth, each of them 
large enough to contain the whole Ibis. This Ibis was in a 
decayed state, and had so little coherence, that its several parts 
separated on handling it : there was a small portion of the 
neck, with white plumage upon it, remaining, but neither the 
head, the bill, nor any remains of them, could be discovered. 
The feathers of this bird are of a dark brown colour, in some 
parts tipped with white ; the neck and the tail have a white 
plumage, and as much of the tail as could be preserved dis- 
played the tufted appearance delineated in the engraving of 
M. Cuvier. 
Two species of the Ibis, the black and the white, have been 
noticed by Herodotus,* Aristotle, - f and Pliny : J but Plu- 
tarch has only mentioned the white Ibis. § Aristotle and 
Pliny have contended that the black Ibis was found only at 
Damietta, ( Pelusium, ) and that, in all the other parts of Egypt, 
the white Ibis only was seen. Whether the two birds which I 
* Euterpe. 
t C. Pm nii Nat. Hist. lib. x. c. xxx. 
f Hist. Animalium, lib. ix. c. xxvii. 
§ De Iside el Osiridc. 
