Essay on the Theory of the Earth

by baron Georges Cuvier

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.