GLOSSY IBIS. 
II7 
destroying all the beetles and grasshoppers which it finds. Thus 
accustomed to favor and immunity (like our own Vulture scav- 
engers), in Egypt these birds advanced without fear into the 
midst of the cities. Strabo relates that they filled the streets 
and lanes of Alexandria to such a degree as to become trou- 
blesome and importunate ; and Hasselquist remarks that in 
Lower Egypt as soon as the Nile becomes freed from its inun- 
dations, they arrive in such numbers as to be seen morning 
and evening frequenting the gardens and- covering whole 
palm-trees with their flocks. The Egyptian Ibis is likewise 
said to construct its nest familiarly in the clustering fronds of 
the date-palm, where it lays four eggs, and sits, according to 
the fanciful calculation of ^lian, as many days as the star 
Isis takes to perform the revolution of its phases. 
Lo enumerate the various fictions and falsehoods with which 
the ancients have chosen to embellish the history of the Ibis 
'vould be as vain and useless to the naturalist as to the sober 
historian. Even Josephus has the credulity to relate that 
when Moses made war on the Ethiopians, he carried, in cages 
of papyrus, a great number of the Ibis, to oppose them to the 
serpents ! Fables of this kind are now no longer capable of 
I^eing substituted for facts, and the naturalist contents him- 
self with the humbler, but more useful, employment of simply 
describing and delineating nature as it issued from the hands 
of its omnipotent Creator. This superstition has also had its 
^y, and the Ibises, no longer venerated even in Egypt, are 
m the autumn commonly shot and ensnared by the Arabs for 
00 , and the markets of the sea-coast are now abundantly 
supplied with them as game, together with the white species, 
oth of which are ignominiously exposed for sale deprived of 
oir heads, — a spectacle from which the ancient Egyptians 
^ old have recoiled with horror. So fickle and capricious, 
^cause unreasonable, is the dominion of superstition ! 
Glossy Ibis is a rare bird in this faunal province, but it 
os an occasional visitor north to Massachusetts and Ontario, 
nm i''' on Prince Edward’s Island. The nest has 
oeen found north of Florida. 
