26 
GLOSSY IBIS. 
this sentiment should even be carried to adoration. But why 
grant such honours to the wild, harmless, and apparently useless 
Ibis ? It is perfectly well proved at this day that the Ibis is as 
useless as it is inoffensive, and if the Egyptian priests who 
worshipped the Deity in his creatures declared it pre-eminently 
sacred; if while the adoration of other similar divinities was 
confined to peculiar districts, that of the Ibis was universal over 
Egypt ; if it was said, that should the Gods take mortal forms it 
would be under that of the Ibis that they would prefer to appear 
on earth, and so many things of the kind, we can assign no other 
reason than the fact of their appearing with the periodical rains, 
coming down from the upper country when the freshening Etherian 
winds began to blow, when they were driven in search of a better 
climate by the very rains that produce the inundation of the Nile, 
doing Egypt such signal benefit. The Ibis, whose appearance 
accompanied these blessings, would disappear also at the season 
when the south desert winds from the internal parts of Africa 
brought desolation in their train, which could be averted only by 
the periodical return of the circumstances represented by the Ibis , 
which seemed like Providence to control them, and was therefore 
declared the real Providence of Egypt, though merely the conco¬ 
mitant, and by no means the cause of those blessings, by which 
they profited in common with all. It thus became so identified 
with the country as to be used as its hieroglyphic representative, 
and was said to be so attached to its native land that it would die 
of grief if carried out of it, and it was on account of its fidelity to 
the soil that it was honoured as its emblem. So good a citizen 
could not of course from selfish motives migrate periodically, and 
its absence must have been for its country’s sake ! Hence the 
ridiculous tale current throughout antiquity, and strengthened by 
the testimony of Herodotus, iElian, Solinus, Marcellinus, copied 
by Cicero, (who went so far as to assign to the Ibis proper 
