صور الصفحة
PDF
النشر الإلكتروني

When in full maturity, the whole plumage is a deep glowing scarlet, except the tips of the four outer quill-feathers, which are glossy blue-black. This colour it gains, however, only gradually; and in captivity, in our climate, (for it is not unfrequently brought to England alive,) it never gains more than a dull rosy tint. The young, when newly hatched, are covered with black down, but soon become gray; before they can fly, however, they have changed this colour for white: the first moult gives a roseate tinge on the breast and wings, which increases at the next moult; but it is not until the third or fourth year that the plumage has attained its perfection. Length twenty-four inches, of which the beak measures six.

If the scarlet Ibis be the most beautiful, the SACRED IBIS (Ibis religiosa) is the most celebrated of the genus.

THE SACRED IBIS.

A native of the banks of the Nile, and spread also along the coasts of southern Africa; it occurs also in India, visiting, in flocks, the Dukhun during the winter. It is but within the last few years, however, that this bird, so celebrated among the ancients, and held in such reverence

by the Egyptians, has become identified; naturalists having long mistaken others, entirely different, for that which was once so well known as the most sacred of all sacred animals. The Ibis was a bird to which the ancient Egyptians rendered religious homage; it was reared with solicitude in their temples, "wandered unmolested through their towns," and its "murderer, although he had involuntarily become so, was punished with death." The most exalted virtues were attributed to it, and after its death it was embalmed with all the honours and respect which children were accustomed to pay to a deceased parent; nay, it was said to be the guardian of the sacred land, and the gods would have assumed its figure had they dwelt on earth, Mercury having indeed taken it upon himself when he came to instruct mankind. Many other stories, equally absurd, were told and credited by that astonishing people, who are a marked illustration of the pitch to which extensive attainments in the arts may be carried, while the greatest ignorance may prevail as to the knowledge of the true and living God.

Although well preserved mummies of this bird are to be met with in abundance, they appear, if not to have escaped the observation of naturalists, at all events to have been examined without much penetration; and even Blumenbach, the celebrated physiologist of Germany, who examined the bones of the true Ibis in a mummy at London, considered them as belonging to the Tantalus Ibis, a bird as large as a stork, and with a similar kind of beak; thus falling into the universal error. The individual to whom the merit of breaking through this popular error is due, is the traveller Bruce, who used his own eyes, and exercised his own judgment. He at once recognised the true Ibis as one which at the present day abounds on the banks of the Nile, and is known there by the name of Abou-Hannes, or Father John. This bird, he tells us, appeared to him the same " as that which the mummy-pitchers contained;" while the Tantalus Ibis of Linnæus, or white Ibis of Buffon, was there unknown, or extremely rare, so that he never even saw it. The various sculptured figures of the Sacred Ibis, which are still pre

away

served upon the relics of antiquity, Egyptian, Greek, and Roman, are sufficient to confirm his opinion, independent of the actual relics of the bird in question. At a subsequent period, the illustrious Cuvier, suspecting the accuracy of the prevailing theories entertained by the scientific, instituted a series of investigations which led to a similar conclusion. Speaking of two Ibis mummies, taken from the pits of Saccara, he says, " On carefully exposing them, we perceived that the bones of the embalmed bird were much smaller than those of the Tantalus Ibis of naturalists; that they did not much exceed those of the curlew in size; that its beak resembled that of the latter, being only a little shorter in proportion to its thickness, and not at all that of the Tantalus; and, lastly, that its plumage was white, with the quills marked with black, as the ancients have described it.".... "We found, after some 'inquiries, that the mummies of the Ibis which had been opened before by different naturalists, were similar to ours." Buffon, who examined several, and even noticed the character of the different parts, was blindly led by the popular opinion. And yet the paintings of Egyptian ceremonies, at Herculaneum, in which several of the Ibis are drawn walking in the courts of temples; the mosaic of Palestine, which presents these birds perched upon buildings; various medals and bronze figures, all of which are accurate representations, were known; so that, as is too often the case in matters of the highest moment as well as in those relating to science or art, the eyes and the understanding seem to have been wilfully blinded. One cause of this universal error, however, arose from the supposition, that a bird described as a destroyer of serpents, and which, according to the information received by Herodotus, once saved Egypt from the invasion of a host of "winged serpents," must be a bird of considerable size, and armed with a large and powerful beak, and which must therefore be sought for among such as possessed these characters; "for how could a bird with a weak bill, a curlew, devour these dangerous reptiles?" That the Ibis religiosa ate nothing but serpents, is not pretended; but that it did eat them, is also proved; and it is

well observed by Cuvier, " that positive proofs, such as descriptions, figures, and mummies, ought to preponderate always over accounts of habits, too often imagined, without any other motive than to justify the different worships rendered to animals. It might," says he, " 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 direct proof, that the birds preserved as mummies, and 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.' The identity of the Sacred Ibis being thus established, it remains for us to give our readers some description of it.

The Sacred Ibis, (Ibis religiosa, Cuvier,) the AbouHannes of Bruce, is about the size of a common fowl. In youth the neck is partially covered with down or small feathers of a blackish tint, which fall off when the plumage is mature; leaving the head and neck bare, which, with the beak and feet, are of a decided black colour. The general plumage is a clear and spotless white, with the exception of the tips of the quill-feathers, which are glossy black, with violet reflection; as are also the last four secondaries, which have the barbs singularly elongated, and silky, so as to form a graceful plume hanging down over the wings and tail, and presenting an effective contrast to the purity of the rest of the plumage.

Its food is the same as that of its congeners, namely, reptiles, insects, worms, &c. which it searches for in the mud and slimy banks of rivers and marshes, in fields and desert places.

A specimen of this interesting bird may be seen in the museum of the Zoological Society; and a mummy, in a fine state of preservation, partially freed from the linen bandages, in order that the principal parts may be displayed, is in the museum of the Royal College of Sur

geons.

With the genus Ibis our sketch of the family Ardeida

may be closed. It leads us at once to the next family, to several of the members of which it is intimately allied. Cuvier, indeed, placed it with them, separating it from the herons and storks, upon the ground of its affinity to the Curlews, (Numenius;) and we must confess that it appears questionable on which side of the boundary line it should be placed, nor does it much matter, since its alliances as an intervening link are displayed in either arrangement.

The family upon which we now enter is that termed Scolopacida, it comprehends the Curlews, the Snipes, the Avocets, the Sandpipers, and many more.

FAMILY SCOLOPACIDE.-The members of this group are the inhabitants of marshes, and the shores of lakes, rivers, or the sea. Their food consists entirely of animal matter, such as worms, insects, mollusca, small fishes, &c. "Most of the genera (as Selby observes) procure food by thrusting the bill into the soft earth, or the mud of shores, and thence extracting their prey; and to facilitate this, an extraordinary developement of nerve is distributed over and to the extreme point of the bill, thus endowing them with an exquisite sense of feeling; and in many species this member is further provided with a peculiar muscle, which, by the closing of the upper part of the mandibles, operates so as to expand them at the point, and enables the bird, with the bill still buried in the ground, to seize its prey the moment it is aware of being in contact with it." This peculiar mode of searching for their prey has obtained for many species at least (the snipe, woodcock, &c.) the title of " Birds of suction."

All the species possess great powers of wing, and are more or less migratory in their habits. Their distribution is very general; no part of the world being without some one species; and many species are common to every quarter of the globe.

Their nidification is on the ground, the eggs being four in number, and of a peculiar form, with one end large and obtuse, the other small and pointed. In the

H H

« السابقةمتابعة »