178 
CARNIVORA. 
Sonnini represents the ichneumon as having lost 
all the importance once attached to it by the people of 
Egypt. Generally predacious, like the rest of the tribe, 
it is as great an enemy to domestic poultry as to those 
animals, which are noxious and injurious to mankind. 
The consequent mischief it commits is therefore to 
be balanced against its beneficial services. It is said 
to be kept by the Egyptians in a domestic state * ; 
but this is positively denied, by Sonnini, to be the 
case at present ; or to have been so in the memory 
of man ; and he adds, that the modern Egyptians 
have no greater regard for the ichneumon, than we 
have for the marten or polecat. 
Well-meaning persons, who are more remarkable 
for the warmth of their imagination than the sound- 
ness of their judgment, sometimes injure the cause 
of true religion by attributing objects and intentions 
to Nature, or rather to Nature’s God, which are 
puerile in themselves, and far below what we may 
rationally presume to be the economy of the great 
Author and Preserver of all things. Thus the fero- 
cious character of the ichneumon, which seems equally 
directed against all things that are inferior to it in 
power, has been represented as a divine interposition 
to rid Egypt of crocodiles ; because, whenever they 
find crocodiles’ eggs in the sand, they eat them. But 
it happens, unfortunately for such reasoners, that, 
from the mouth of the Nile to the town of Siout 
ichneumons are very common, and there are no cro- 
Belon, Prosper Alpinus, &c. 
