Part 17

+-----------------------+-------------+------------+----------------+ | | Skeleton of |Skeleton of |Saccara Ibises. | | Parts. |an Ibis from |the Curlew. +-------+--------+ | | Thebes. | |Larger.|Smaller.| +-----------------------+-------------+------------+-------+--------+ |Head and beak together,| 0.210 | 0.215 | ... | ... | |Head alone, | 0.047 | 0.040 | ... | ... | |The 14 vertebræ of | 0.192 | 0.150 | ... | ... | | the neck together, | | | | | |Back, | 0.080 | 0.056 | ... | ... | |Sacrum, | 0.087 | 0.070 | ... | ... | |Coccyx, | 0.037 | 0.035 | ... | ... | |Femur, | 0.078 | 0.060 | ... | ... | |Tibia, | 0.150 | 0.112 | ... | 0.095 | |Tarsus, | 0.102 | 0.090 | ... | ... | |Middle-toe, | 0.097 | 0.070 | ... | ... | |Sternum, | 0.092 | 0.099 | ... | ... | |Clavicle, | 0.055 | 0.041 | ... | 0.04 | |Humerus, | 0.133 | 0.106 | 0.124 | ... | |Fore-arm, | 0.153 | 0.117 | 0.144 | 0.114 | |Hand, | 0.125 | 0.103 | ... | ... | +-----------------------+-------------+------------+----------------+

It appears by this table, that the animal of Thebes was larger than our curlew; that one of the Saccara ibises was intermediate in size between that of Thebes and our common curlew, and that the other was smaller than this latter bird. It is also seen that the different parts of the body of the ibis do not observe the same proportions between each other, as those of the curlew. The beak of the former, for example, is in particular shorter, although all the other parts are longer, &c.

However, these differences of proportions do not exceed what might be expected in species of the same genus: the forms and characters which may be considered as generic, are absolutely the same.

We must therefore search for the true ibis, not among those tantaluses of large size and sharp beak, but among the curlews; and, let it be observed, that, by the name _curlew_, we intend to signify, not the artificial genus formed by Latham and Gmelin, of all the wading birds which have the beak curved downwards, but a natural genus, to which we shall give the name of _Numenius_, and which will comprehend all the waders with beaks curved downwards, soft and rounded, whether their head be bare or clothed with feathers. It is the genus _courlis_, such as Buffon imagined it[352].

A glance over the collection of birds belonging to the royal cabinet, has enabled us to distinguish a species, which is neither named nor described in the works of systematic writers, excepting perhaps by Dr Latham; and which, when carefully examined, will be found to correspond with all that the ancients, the monuments and mummies, indicate as characteristic of the ibis.

We here present a figure of it, Plate V. It is a bird somewhat larger than the curlew; its beak is arcuate like that of the curlew, but a little shorter, and sensibly thicker in proportion, somewhat compressed at its base, and marked on each side with a groove, which, proceeding from the nostril, is continued to the extremity; while, in the curlew, there is a similar groove, which disappears before arriving at the middle of the beak; the colour of the beak is more or less black; the head, and the two upper thirds of the neck, are entirely destitute of feathers, and the skin of these parts is black. The plumage of the body, wings, and tail, is white, with the exception of the ends of the large quills of the wing, which are black; the four last secondary quills have the barbs singularly long, attenuated, and hanging down over the ends of the wings, when the latter are folded; their colour is a beautiful black, with violet reflections. The feet are black, the legs are thicker, and the toes much longer in proportion than those of the curlew; the membranes between the bases of the toes are also more extended; the leg is entirely covered with small polygonal, or what is called reticulated scales, and the base of the toes itself has only similar scales; while, in the curlew, two-thirds of the leg, and the whole length of the toes, are scutulate, that is to say, furnished with transverse scales. There is a reddish tint under the wing, toward the top of the thigh, and on the anterior large wing coverts; but this tint appears to be an individual character, or the result of an accident, for it does not occur in other individuals that are in other respects entirely similar.

This first individual came from the collection of the Stadtholder, and its native country was unknown. The late M. Desmoulins, assistant naturalist to the Museum, who had seen two others, asserted that they came from Senegal; one of them must even have been brought by M. Geoffroy de Villeneuve: but we shall see, as we proceed, that Bruce[353] found this species in Abyssinia, where it was named _Abou-Hannes_ (Father John); and that M. Savigny saw it in abundance in Lower Egypt, where it was called _Abou-Mengel_ (Father of the Sickle). It is probable that the moderns will give no credit to the assertion of the ancients, that the ibis never left Egypt without perishing[354]. This assertion would, besides, be as contrary to the Tantalus Ibis as to our common Curlew; for the individuals which we have in Europe came from Senegal. It was from thence that M. Geoffroy de Villeneuve had brought the individual in the Museum of Natural History. It is even much rarer in Egypt than our curlew; for, since Perrault, nobody mentions having seen it there, or having received it from that country. An individual without the reddish tint, but in other respects perfectly similar to the first, was brought home by M. de Labillardiere, in his voyage to Australasia made along with M. d’Entrecasteux.

We afterwards learned, that, when young, these birds have the head and neck furnished with feathers in the part which, as they advance in age, is to become bare; and that the scapulars are less elongated, and of a paler and duller black. It is in this state that one was brought to us from Australasia by the late Peron, which, in other respects, differs from ours, and from that of M. Labillardiere, only in having some black markings on the alula and first large coverts, and in which the head and upper part of the neck are covered with blackish feathers. It was also a youngish individual which M. Savigny brought from Egypt, and which is figured in his memoir upon the Ibis, Plate I.; and in the great work on Egypt, under the head Birds, Pl. VII. The feathers of the head and back part of the neck are rather grey than black; those of the fore part of the neck are white. Lastly, Bruce’s figure (Atlas, Plate XXXV.) is also taken from a young individual observed in Abyssinia, and almost similar to that of M. Savigny.

We have received from Pondicherry, by M. Leschenault, an individual similar to that of Peron, but in which, the head only, and a small part of the back of the neck, are furnished with blackish feathers; all the rest is covered with white feathers. But it is not the less certain, that all these birds have the head and the neck bare when they are full grown.

The late M. Macé sent from Bengal to the Museum several individuals of a species very nearly allied to this, which has the beak a little longer, and less arched, of which the first quill only has a little black on the two edges of its point, and of which the secondary quills are also somewhat attenuated, and slightly tinged with reddish.

It appears, according to M. Savigny, p. 25, that M. Levaillant observed another still, which has the secondary quills similarly elongated, but of which the neck always retains its feathers, and whose face is of a red colour.

The same M. Macé also sent us a tantalus, very much resembling that which has been regarded by naturalists as the ibis, but of which the small wing-coverts, and a broad band at the lower part of the breast, are black, and speckled with white. The last secondary quills are elongated, and tinged with rose-colour. It is known that, in the Tantalus ibis of naturalists, the small wing-coverts are speckled with purplish red, and that the whole under part of the body is white.

We give here a table of the parts of some of these birds, which could be accurately measured in stuffed individuals. By comparing them with those of the skeletons of embalmed ibises, one may judge if it were possible to believe for a single moment that these mummies belonged to the tantalus.

+-----------------------+-------+-------+-------+---------------------+ | |Length of the beak, from its commissure to | | |the tip, | | | |Length of the naked part of the leg, | | PARTS OF THE BODY. | | |Length of the tarsus, | | | | | |Length of the middle | | | | | |toe, | +-----------------------+-------+-------+-------+---------------------+ |Tantalus Ibis of | | | | | | Naturalists. | 0.210 | 0.130 | 0.190 | 0.105 | |Macé’s Indian | | | | | | Tantalus. | 0.265 | 0.150 | 0.250 | 0.115 | |Numenius Ibis the true | | | | | | Ibis of the Ancients.| 0.125 | 0.041 | 0.085 | 0.080 | |Numenius Ibis, measured| | | | | | by M. Savigny. | 0.154 | 0.056 | 0.097 | 0.092 | |Macé’s Numenius. | 0.148 | 0.055 | 0.095 | 0.083 | |Labillardiere’s | | | | | | Numenius. | 0.165 | 0.040 | 0.084 | 0.086 | |Peron’s Numenius. | 0.131 | 0.034 | 0.080 | 0.078 | |Leschenault’s Numenius.| 0.132 | 0.044 | 0.093 | 0.086 | +-----------------------+-------+-------+-------+---------------------+

Let us now examine the books of the ancients and their monuments; let us compare what they have said of the ibis, or the figures of it which they have traced, with the bird which we have been describing; and we shall see all our difficulties vanishing, and all the testimonies according with what is best of all for the purpose, the body itself of the bird preserved in the mummy.

“The most common ibises,” says Herodotus, (Euterpe, No. 76.) “have the head and the fore-part of the neck bare, the plumage white, excepting on the head, the nape, the ends of the wings and of the rump, which are black.[355] Their beak and feet are similar to those of the other ibises.”

How does it happen that the travellers of our times do not make so good descriptions of the birds which they observe as that which Herodotus has made of the ibis? How could this description have been applied to a bird which has only the face bare, and which has that part of a red colour, to a bird which has the rump white, and not covered over at least as ours by the black feathers of the wings?

And yet this latter character was essential to the ibis. Plutarch (De Iside et Osiride) says, that the manner in which the white was cut by the black in the plumage of this bird, presented the form of a lunar crescent. It is, in fact, by the union of the black of the last quills, with that of the two ends of the wings, that there is formed, in the white, a large semicircular notch, which gives to the white the figure of a crescent.

It is more difficult to explain what he has intended to say, in averring that the feet of the ibis form an equilateral triangle with its beak. But we can understand the assertion of Ælian, that when it draws in its head and neck among its feathers, it represents, in some measure, the figure of a heart.[356] It was on account of this, according to Horus Apollo (c. 35.), the emblem of the human heart.

From what Herodotus says of the nakedness of the throat, and of the feathers which covered the upper part of the neck, he appears to have had under his eyes a middle aged individual; but it is not the less certain, that the Egyptians also knew very well the individuals with the neck entirely bare. We see such represented from sculptures in bronze, in Caylus’s Collection of Egyptian Antiquities (vol. i. pl. x. no. 4., and vol. v. pl. xi. no. 1.) This last figure is even so like our bird represented in pl. v., that it might be said that it was taken from it.

The paintings of Herculaneum no longer leave any doubt on the subject. Plates 138 and 140 of David’s edition, and vol. ii. p. 315, pl. 59, and p. 321, pl. 60 of the original edition, which represent Egyptian ceremonies, shew several ibises walking in the court of the temples. The characteristic blackness of the head and neck are in particular recognised, and it is easily seen from the proportion which their figure bears to the persons in the painting, that it must have been a bird of half a metre at the most, and not of a metre, or thereabouts, like the Tantalus ibis.

The mosaic of Palestine, also presents in its middle part several ibises perched upon buildings. They differ in nothing from those of the paintings of Herculaneum. A Sardonyx of Dr Mead’s Collection, copied by Shaw, App. pl. v., and representing an ibis, seems to be a miniature of the bird which we have described. A medal of Adrian, in large bronze, represented in the Farnesian Museum, vol. vi. pl. xxviii. fig. 16, and another of the same emperor, in silver, represented in vol. iii. pl. vi. fig. 9, afford figures of the ibis, which, notwithstanding their smallness, are pretty like our bird.

With regard to the figures of the ibis, sculptured upon the plinth of the statue of the Nile, at Belvedere, and upon the copy of it at the garden of the Tuileries, they are not sufficiently finished to serve as proofs; but among the hieroglyphics of which the Institute of Egypt has caused impressions to be made upon the spot, there are several which distinctly represent our bird. In plate iii. fig. 1, we give one of these impressions which M. Geoffroy has had the politeness to communicate to us.

We insist particularly on this latter figure, because it is the most authentic of all, having been made at the time, and on the spot where the ibis was worshipped, and being cotemporary with its mummies; while those which we have cited above, having been made in Italy, and by artists who did not profess the Egyptian worship, might have been less faithful.

We owe to Bruce the justice of saying, that he recognised the bird which he describes under the name of _Abou-Hannes_, as the true ibis. He says expressly, that this bird appeared to him to resemble that which the mummy pitchers contained; and further, that this Abou-Hannes, or _Father John_, is very common on the banks of the Nile, while he never saw there the bird represented by Buffon, under the name of the White Ibis of Egypt.

M. Savigny, one of the naturalists of the expedition to Egypt, equally asserts his not having seen the _Tantalus_ in that country, but he obtained a great number of our _Numenius_ near the Lake Menzale, in Lower Egypt, and carried their skins with him.

The Abou-Hannes has been placed by Latham, in his _Index Ornithologicus_, under the name of _Tantalus Æthiopicus_; but he does not speak of Bruce’s conjecture respecting its identity with the ibis. The travellers before and after Bruce appear to have all been in error. Belon thought that the white ibis was the stork, in which he evidently contradicted all testimony on that head. No person has adopted his opinion in this matter, excepting the apothecaries, who have taken the stork for an emblem, because they have confounded it with the ibis, to which the invention of clysters is attributed[357].

Prosper Alpinus, who relates that this invention is due to the ibis, gives no description of this bird in his Medicine of the Egyptians[358]. In his Natural History of Egypt, he speaks of it only after Herodotus, to whose account he only adds, without doubt from a passage of Strabo, which I shall mention farther on, that that bird resembles the stork in size and figure. He mentions his having been informed that white and black ones occurred in abundance on the edges of the Nile; but it is evident from his very expressions, that he did not believe it had been seen there[359].

Shaw says of the ibis,[360] that it is at the present day excessively rare, and that he has never seen it. His _Emseesy_, or ox-bird, which Gmelin very improperly refers to the Tantalus Ibis, is of the size of the curlew, with the body white, and the beak and feet red. It frequents the meadows, where it follows the cattle; its flesh is not well tasted, and corrupts quickly. It is easy to see that this is not the Tantalus, and still less the Ibis of the ancients.

Hasselquist was not acquainted with the white Ibis nor with the black one, his _Ardea Ibis_ is a small heron, which has the beak straight. Linnæus had acted very properly in placing it among the herons, in his tenth edition; but he erred, as I have said, in transporting it afterwards as a synonym to the genus _Tantalus_.

Demaillet[361] conjectures that the ibis might be the bird peculiar to Egypt, and which was named Pharaoh’s Fowl (_Chapon de Pharaon_), and at Aleppo _Saphan-bacha_. It devours serpents. There are of them white, and white and black; and it follows, for more than a hundred leagues, the caravans which go from Cairo to Mecca, for the purpose of feeding upon the carcases of animals which are killed during the journey, while at any other time there is not one seen along this route. But the author does not consider this conjecture as certain; he even says, that we must give up understanding the ancients, when they have spoken so as not to be understood. He ends with concluding, that the ancients have perhaps indiscriminately comprehended under the name of Ibis, all birds which rendered to Egypt the service of clearing it of the dangerous reptiles which this climate produces in abundance, such as the vulture, the falcon, the stork, the sparrowhawk, &c.

He had reason not to regard his Pharaoh’s fowl as the ibis; for, although its description is very imperfect, and although Buffon fancied he recognised the ibis in it, it is easy to judge, as well as by what Pokocke says of it, that this bird must be a carnivorous one; and, in fact, we see from Bruce’s figure (Vol. v. p. 191. of the French edition), that Pharaoh’s fowl is nothing else than the _rachama_ or the small white vulture with black wings (_Vultur perenopterus_, Linn.)--a bird very different from what we have proved above to be the ibis.

Pokocke says that it appears, from the descriptions which are given of the ibis, and from the figures which he has seen of it in the temples of Upper Egypt, that it was a species of Crane. I have seen, he adds, a number of these birds in the islands of the Nile; they were for the most part greyish[362]. These few words suffice to prove that he did not know the ibis better than the others.

The learned have not been more happy in their conjectures than the travellers. Middleton refers to the ibis, a bronze figure of a bird, of which the beak is arched, but short, the neck very long, and the head furnished with a small crest, a figure which never had any resemblance to the bird of the Egyptians[363]. This figure is, besides, not at all in the Egyptian style, and Middleton himself agrees that it must have been made at Rome. Saumaise upon Solinus says nothing that relates to the present question.

As to the black ibis, which Aristotle places only near Pelusium[364]; it was long thought that Belon alone had seen it[365]. The bird which he describes under this name is a species of curlew, to which he attributes a head similar to that of the cormorant, that is to say, apparently bald, a red beak, and feet of the same colour; but as he does not speak of the ibis in his journey[366], I suppose that it was only in France that he made this reference, and by comparison with mummies of the Ibis. What is certain is, that this curlew, with the beak and feet red, was not known in Egypt[367], but that our green curlew of Europe (_Scolopax Falcinellus_, Linn. Pl. Enl. 819.) is seen very commonly there, that it is even more abundant than the white numenius[368]; and, as it resembles it in form and size, and, further, as its plumage may appear black, it can by no means be doubted that it was the true black ibis of the ancients. M. Savigny also made a drawing of it in Egypt, but from a young individual only[369]. Buffon’s figure is from an adult bird; but its colours are too pale.

The error which prevails at present respecting the white ibis began with Perrault, who was also the first naturalist who made known the Tantalus ibis of the present day. This error, adopted by Brisson and Buffon, passed into the twelfth edition of Linnæus, where it is blended with that of Hasselquist, which had been inserted in the tenth, forming with it a compound altogether monstrous.

It was founded on the idea, that the ibis was essentially a bird that destroyed serpents, and upon this very natural conclusion, that, in order to enable it to devour these reptiles, it was necessary for it to have a sharp beak, more or less resembling that of the heron. This idea is even the only good objection that can be made against the identity of our bird to the ibis. How, it is urged, could a bird with a weak bill, a curlew, devour those dangerous reptiles?

It may be replied, that positive proofs, such descriptions, figures, and mummies, ought always to preponderate over accounts of habits too often imagined without any other motive than to justify the different worships rendered to animals. It might be added, the serpents from which the ibis delivered Egypt, are represented to us as very venomous, but not as very large. I have even obtained a direct proof that the birds preserved as mummies, which have had a beak precisely similar to that of our bird, were true serpent eaters; for I found in one of their mummies the still undigested remains of the skin and scales of serpents, which I have deposited in our anatomical galleries.