Researches on fossil bones, in which are established the characters of various animals whose species have been destroyed by the revolutions of the globe

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RESEARCHES F

ON

FOSSIL BONES,

IN WHICH ARE ESTABLISHED
; THE CHARACTERS OF

VARIOUS ANIMALS
WHOSE SPECIES HAVE BEEN DESTROYED

BY DEE REVOLUTIONS OF
The Globe;

4

BY

BARON CUVIER,

Great Officer of the Legion of Honour, Counsellor of State, and Member of the
Royal Council of Public Instruction, One of the Forty of the French Academy,
Perpetual Secretary to the Academy of Sciences, Member of the Aca-
demies and Royal Societies of London, Berlin, Petersburgh,
Stockholm, Edinburgh, Copenhagen, Gottingen, Turin,
Bavaria, Modena, The Netherlands, Calcutta, and of
the Linnzan Society of London, &c. &c. &c. &c. -

FOURTH EDITION,

Rebiser and Completers
BY ADDITIONAL NOTES,

AND A

SUPPLEMENT LEFT BY THE AUTHOR.
Triomphante des eaux, du trépas, et du temps,

La terre a cru revoir ses premiers habitans.
DELILLE.

IN FOUR VOLUMES.

LONDON:
G. HENDERSON, 2, OLD BAILEY, LUDGATE-HILL.

AND SOLD BY ALL BOOKSELLERS.

1834.

J. HENDERSON, ] [WHITE-FRIARS-

Cavers Kesearches on Fossil Bones

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TABLE of the Extent of Zopracat ConsreLiations, as they are drawn on our Globes, and of
4 the Times which the Colures employ in traversing them.

ARIES. LIBRA.

Longitudesin | Year of the} Year of the Longitudes in | Year of the| Year of the
1800. Equinox. | Solstice. ‘ 1800. Equinox. | Solstice.

—————| ee

1s 0° 23'40"| — 389 711° 0'44") —14113
1 10 40 | — 441 7:12 18 O | —14246
1 52 0}) — 710 716 35 O} —14514
1 18 50} — 742 7:22 20 34 | —14929
1 14 16} — 810 b 7 27 41 O | —15312
1 —1739 & 7 28 30 15 | —15372
1 —1862

Duration 1473

—8916
—15508 —9028
—15980 —9500
—16387 —9907

4 —17049 | 105569
A Coch.

5 aes on || easel
Duration p Duration

SAGITTARIUS.

Propus 5 28 20 | —17530
n 8 382 56 | —17895
y 10 98 | —18421
ey 5 14 15 | —18667

Castor 5 23 19 | —19299

Pollux 25 | —19487
a ” ”

Duration Duration 1957

RNUS,

39 —19775

3 —19877
15 19807
53 —20872
59 —21166
—21458

Duration 1683

—13964
—14805
—15521
—15920
—16483
—23260 | —16780

2816 3816

—10371
—10750
—11307
—11786
—12676
—13620
—13845

3474

2160

To face page 121.

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TABLE OF GEOLOGICAL FORMATIONS IN THE ORDER OF THEIR
SUPERPOSITION. BY M. AL. DE HUMBOLDT.

Alluvial deposites.

Sandstone and sand of Fontainbleau. =
Gypsum with bones. Siliceous Limestone. E
Coarse limestone. Ea
(Clay of London.) Ss
Tertiary sandstone, with lignites (brown coal). &
Plastic clay. Molasse. Nagelfluhe.
white,
Chalk, soft (tuffeau). Ananchites.
chloritic.
Green sand. i
Wead clay. Secondary sandstone with /ignites. ‘
Ferruginous sand. S
Ammonites. Limestone of Jura. Slaty beds with fish and| 3
Planulites. crustacea. 5
Quadersandstein, or white sandstone, bee e
sometimes above the lias. Molites aad CAe ne 3
\Muschelkalk. - FR ie ee 5
Va enites nOdoes: ‘Marly or calcareous lias

\with graphea arcuata.
Marls with fibrous-gypsum. Saliferous variegated sandstone.
Arenaceous layers.
Product. aculcat. (Alpine limestone.)
Magnesian Limestone. Zechstein.
Coppery slate.
Quartziferous Co-ordinate formations of porphyry,
porphery. red sandstone and coal.

Transition formations.
Slates with Lydian stone, greywacke, diorites, euphotides.
Limestone with orthoceratites, trilobites, and evomphalites.

Intermediary
Formations

Primitive formations. ce

Clayey slates (Thonchicfer). 3 a

fe Mica slates. ES
Gneiss. <

Granites. i

[To face page 136.

Tet a siatlehedly s

THE SURFACE OF THE GLOBE. 137

Beneath the chalk are green sands, the lower layers of which have
some organic remains. Still deeper are ferruginous sands. In many
countries, both these are strongly marked with sandstone layers, in
which are also found lignites, amber, and relics of animals.

Under this is the vast mass of strata composing the chain of Jura
and the mouatains which form its continuation into Swabia and Fran-
conia; the main ridge of the Appenines, and a vast many beds in
France and England. It consists of calcareous slates, rich in fish and
crustaceous animals ; extensive beds of oolites, or of a granular lime-
stone; marl, grey limestone, having pyrites characterised by the pre-
sence of ammonites; oysters with bent valves, termed grypheee; and
of reptiles more and more singular in construction and character.

Extensive layers of sand and sand-stone, often bearing vegetable
impressions, support all these beds of Jura, and are themselves sup-
ported by a layer of limestone, which is so replete with mumerous
shells and zoophytes that Werner has called it by the too common
name of shelly limestone, and which other sandstone strata, of the
sort called variegated sandstone, separate from a limestone still more
ancient, not less incorrectly called Alpine limestone ; because it composes
the high Alps of the Tyrol, but which in fact is found in our eastern
provinces, and throughout the whole south of Germany.

It is in this limestone, termed shelly, that the vast masses of gyp-
sum and rich layers of salt are deposited; and beneath it are thin
layers of coppery slates, very rich in fish, and amongst which are also
found fresh-water reptiles. ‘The coppery slate is supported by a red
sandstone of the period when those famous layers of coal were depo-
sited, the resource whence the present generation is supplied, and the
remains of the earliest vegetable productions which ornamented the
face of the globe. We find, from the trunks of ferns, whose impres-
sions they have preserved, how much these ancient forests differed
from the present.

We next arrive at those transitive formations in which primeval na-
ture, a nature inanimate and solely mineral, seemed still to contend
for empire with animated nature. Black limestone, and slates which
only present crustacea and shells of species now extinct, are present-
ed alternately with the remains of primitive formations, and announce
to us the fact of our having reached the most ancient formations that
it has been permitted to us to discover; those ancient foundations of
the actual coating of the globe, the marble and primitive slates, the
gneisses, and finally the granites.

Such is the exact arrangement of the successive masses with which

VOL. I. P

138 ON THE REVOLUTIONS OF

nature has enveloped this earth. Geology has detected it by com-
bining the lights of mineralogy with those furnished by the sciences
of organic structure and existence; an order so new and pregnant
with fact, that it has only been acquired since the actual proofs
offered to observation have been preferred to fantastic systems, and
contradictory conjectures on the primary origin of the globe, and all
those phenomena, which in nowise resembling those to which we are
accumstomed, could neither detect therein, to throw a light on the facts,
materials to produce it, oratouchstone to try and prove. Some years
since, the majority of geologists might be compared to historians who
were only interested in the history of France with regard to what
passed amongst the Gauls before Julius Cesar; but yet these histo-
rians, in composing their romances, availed themselves of their ac-
quaintance with subsequent facts, while the geologists alluded to en-
tirely neglected the posterior occurrences which alone could cast any
light on the obscurity of former times.

In conclusion, it only remains for me to present the result of my
individual researches, or in other words the summary of my great
work. I shall enumerate the animals that I have discovered, in an
order the reverse of that which I have followed in enumerating the
formations. By going deeper and deeper into the series of layers, I
got more and more remote as to the epochs of time. I shall now
commence with the most ancient formations, and mention the animals
found in them, and passing from epoch to epoch, point out those
which successively present themselves, in proportion as they approach
more nearly to the present age.

Enumeration of the Fossil Animals detected by the Author.

We have seen that zoophytes, mollusca, and certain crustacea begin
to appear in the transition formations; there may be even at that
period bones and skeletons of fishes; but they are at a very consider-
able distance from the epoch in which we discover the remains of ani-
mals which live on the earth and breathe the air of nature.

The vast beds of coal, and the trunks of palms and ferns, of which
they retain the impressions, although already evidencing dry lands,
and a vegetable thereon, do not yet show any bones of quadrupeds,
nor even of oviparous quadrapeds.

It is only a little above, in the coppery bituminous slates, that we
discover the first traces of them; and what is very remarkable, the
first quadrupeds are reptiles of the lizard tribe, very much like the large
monitors now existing in the torrid zone. Several individuals of this

THE SURFACE OF THE GLOBE. 139

species are found in the mines of Thuringia, in the midst of in-
numerable fishes of genera now unknown, but which, in their cor-
respondence with the genera of the present times, appear to have lived
in fresh water.

We know that the monitors are also fresh-water animals. A little
higher is the limestone called Alpine, and above it the shelly lime-
stone, so rich in entrochites and encrinites, which forms the basis of a
great part of Germany and Lorraine.

It has produced skeletons of a large sea tortcise, whose shells might
be from six to eight feet in length; and those of another oviparous
quadruped of the lizard tribe, of great size, and with a sharp pointed
nose.

Ascending through the sandstones, which only offer vegetable imprints
of large arundmacez, bamboos, palms, and other monocotyledonous
plants, we reach the different layers of the limestone called limestone
of Jura, because it forms the principal nucleus of this chain.

Herein the class of reptiles developes itself fully, and manifests
itself in various forms, and of gigantic size.

The middle part, composed of oolites and lias, or of grey limestone
with gryphez, has had in deposite the remains of two genera the most
extraordinary of all, which have united the characters of the class of
oviparous quadrupeds with the organs of motion similar to those of the
cetacea.

The ichthyosaurus discovered by Sir Everard Home has the head
of a lizard, but extended into a pointed muzzle, armed with conical
and pointed teeth; enormous eyes, of which the scelerotica is
strengthened with a bony case; a spine composed of flattened vertebree,
like the pieces used at the game of draughts, and concave on both
sides like those of fishes; the ribs slender, the sternum and shoulder-
bones like those of lizards and ornithorynchi; the pelvis small and
weak; and four limbs, of which the humeri and femora are short and
thick, and the other bones flatter, and set nearer each other, like the
stones of a pavement, so as to compose, when enveloped in skin,
fins all in a piece, and scarcely able to be bent; in a word, analogous,
both in its use and construction, to those of cetacea. These reptiles
lived in the sea; on land they could at best only crawl along like seals;
and at tlle same time they breathed elastic air.

The remains of four species have been discovered.

That most extensively found (I. communis) has blunt conical teeth,
and is sometimes twenty feet long.

The second (I platyodon) at least as large, has compressed teeth, with

round and swelling roots»
: P2

140 ON THE REVOLUTIONS OF

The third (I. tezuirostris) has slender and pointed teeth, and the
muzzle slim and lengthened,

The fourth (I. intermedius) has teeth of a medium nature between
the last species and the first. The two latter species do not attain
half the size of the two former. oe

The plesiosaurus, discovered by Mr. Conybeare, must have appeared
even more monstrous than the ichthyosaurus. It had similar limbs, ~
but rather more elongated and flexible; its shoulder and pelvis were
stronger, its vertebrae were nearly assimilated to those of lizards; but
what distinguished it from all oviparous and viviparous quadrupeds,
was a slender neck as long as its body, composed of thirty vertebrae and
upwards, a number greater than that of the neck of all other animals,
rising from the trunk like the body of a serpent, and terminated by a
very smal! head, in which are to be found all essential characteristics
of those of lizards.

If any thing could justify those hydras and other monsters which
are so often drawn on the monuments of the middle ages, it would
assuredly be this plesiosaurus.

Five species are already known, the most generally distributed (P.
dolichodeirus) is more than twenty feet long.

A second (P. vecentior) found in recent strata, has flatter vertebra.

A third (P. carinatus) has a prominence on the lower surface of the
vertebree. :

A fourth, and lastly a fifth (P. pentagonus) and (P. trigonus) have
respectively five and three prominences.

These two genera are everywhere distributed in the has. They
were discovered in England, where the lias is exposed in cliffs of great
extent, and they have been also found in France and Germany.

With them there existed two species of crocodiles, whose bones are
also deposited in the has, amongst ammonites, terebratule, aud other
shells of this ancient sea. We have skeletons of them in our cliffs at
Honfleur, where are found the remains from which I have drawn their
characters.

One of the species, the long-nosed gavial, has amuzzle longer and
the head sharper than thegavial, or long-nosed crocodile of the Ganges;
the body of its vertebrée is convex in front, whilst in the crocodiles now
existing they are so behind. It has been found in the lias of Franco-
nia as well asin those of France.

A second species, the short-nosed gavial, with a muzzle of mid-
dling length, less pointing than that of the gavial of the Ganges, and
more so than the crocodiles as now seen in San Domingo. The verte-
bree were slightly hollowed at the two extremities.

THE SURFACE OF THE GLOBE. 141

Bot these crocodiles are not the only animals which have been found
n these beds of secondary limestone.

The fine oolite quarries of Caen have produced a very remarkable one,
of which the muzzle, as long and as pointed as the long-nosed gavial
has a head wider behind, with the fosse of the temporal bones larger,
It was, by reason of its stony scales, with round cavities, the best
armed of all the crocodiles. The teeth of the lower jaw are alternately
longer and shorter.

There is another species in the oolites of England, but itis only known
by some parts of its cranium, which is not sufficient to afford a perfect
idea of it*.

Another very remarkable genus of reptiles, whose remains, although
also found in the concretion of lias, abound particularly in the oolite
and the higher sands, is the megalosaurus properly so called, for,
with the shape of lizards, and particularly of the monitors, of which
it has also the cutting and indented teeth, it was of so enormous a size,
that in assigning to it the properties of the monitors, it would exceed
seventy feet in length. It would be a lizard as large as a whale.
It was discovered in England by Mr. Buckland, but we have them also
in France, and some of its bones have been found in Germany, if not
of the same species, at least of as pecies which cannot be classed
with eny other genus. We are indebted to M. de Scemmerring for the
first description of it. He discovered the remains in the superior strata
of the oolites, in the calcareous schists (slates) of Franconia, long cele-
brated for the numerous fossils with which they have supplied the
cabinets of the curious, and which will be made still more useful
by the services which their peculiar adaptation for the purposes of
lithography will enable them to render to the arts and sciences.

Crocodiles also are found in these limestone-schists, and always those
with the long muzzle. M. de Scemmerring has described one (the C.
priscus ) of which the entire skeleton of a small individual was pre-
served almost as well as it could have been in our cabinets. It is one
of those which resemble the real gavial of the Ganges ; but the united
portion of its lower jaw is not solong; the lower teeth are alternately
and regularly longer and shorter, and it has ten additional vertebrz at
the tail.

But the most remarkable animals which are deposited in these
limestone-schists are the flying lizards, which I have named ptero-
dactyli.

They are reptiles with a very short tail, a very long back, a muzzle

* We expect a full explanation of it from the researches of Mr. Conybeare,

142 ON THE REVOLUTIONS OF

greatly extended and armed with sharp teeth; supported on high legs,
the anterior extremity has an excessively elongated claw, which proba-
bly supported a membrane which sustained it in the air, together with
four other toes of ordinary size, terminated by hooked claws. One of
these strange animals, whose appearance would be frightful, was about
the size of a thrush, and the other that of a common bat; but from
fragments we find that there existed a much larger species.
A little above these calcareous schists is the limestone (nearly homo-
genous) of theridge of Jura. It contains also bones, but always those
of reptiles—crocodiles and fresh-water tortoises—of which it produces
an abundance in the environs of Soleure. They have been there disco
verd and scrutinized with much care by M. Hugi; and from the frag-
ments already collected we can easily recognize a considerable number
of the species of the fresh-water tortoise, or emydes, which ulterior dis-
coveries only can determine, but many of which have been already dis-
tinguished by their sizes and shapes from all kinds of known emydes.

It is among these numerous oviparous quadrupeds of all sizes and
forms; in the midst of these crocodiles, of these tortoises, of these
flying reptiles, of these immense megalosauri, of these monstrous
plesiosauri, that some small mammifera are said to be first detected.
It is certain that jaw bones, and some bones discovered m England,
belong to this class, and particularly to the family of didelphides, or
those of insectivorous animals.

It may however be suspected, that the stones which encrust them
have originated from some local recomposition subsequent to the epoch
of the formation of these layers. However that may be, we find still
that the reptile tribe predominated exclusively for a long time.

The ferruginous sands placed in England above the chalk, abound
with crocodiles, tortoises, megalosauri, and particularly with a reptile
which presents the singular character of using his teeth like our her-
bivorous mammifera.

Mr. Mantell, of Lewes, in Sussex, discovered this peculiar animal,
as well as other large reptiles, in the sands beneath the chalk. * He
named it the zguanodon.

In the chalk itself there are only reptilia: we find remains of tor-
toises and crocodiles. The famous soft sandstone quarries (carriéres
de tuffau) of the mountain of Saint Peter, near Maestricht, which be-
long to the formation of chalk, have given, beside the very large sea
tortoises, and a vast quantity of shells and marine zoophytes, a genus
oi lizards not less gigantic than the megalosauri, which has become
famous from the researches of Camper, and by the figures which
Faujas has given of its bones in his history of this mountain.

THE SURFACE OF THE GLOBE. 143

It was upwards of twenty-five feet long; its great jaws were armed
with very strong teeth, conical, rather arched and ridged, and it had
also some of these teeth in the palate. There were more than a hun-
dred and thirty vertebre in its spine, convex in front and concave be-
hind. Its tail was high and broad, and formed a large Vertical oar.
Mr. Conybeare has recently proposed to call it the mosasaurus.

The clays and lignites, which are above the chalk, have only produced
crocodiles; and I have every reason to conclude that the lignites in
Switzerland, in which have been found the bones of the beaver and
mastodon, belong to a more recent period. It is only in the coarse
limestone which rests on these clays that I have first found the bones
of mammifera; and even these belong to marine mammifera, to un-
known dolphins, to lamantins and morses.

Amongst the dolphins, there is one whose muzzle, more lengthened
than in any known species, had the lower jaw united to an extent
nearly equal to that of a gavial. It was found near Dax, by the late
President of Borda. :

Another of the rocks in the department of Orne, has also a long
muzzle, but rather differently shaped.

The whole genus of lamantines is now marine, and inhabit the seas
of the torrid zone; and that of the morses, of whom we have but one
living species, is confined to the icy sea. However, we find the ske-
leton of these two species together in the layers of the coarse lime-
stone of the middle of France; and this union of species, of which the
most similar are now in opposite zones, will again occur in our re-
searches more than once.

Our fossil lamantins differ from the known lamantins, by having
a head more elongated, and otherwise constructed. Their ribs, easily
recognised by their rounded thickness and by the density of their tex-
ture, are not rare in our different provinces.

As to the fossil morse, we have as yet only fragments insufficient
to characterise the species.

It is only in the layers which have succeeded the coarse limestone,
or at most in thosewhich might have been formed at the same time with
it but deposited in the fresh-water lakes, that the class of land mam-
mifera begins to show itself in any abundance.

I regard as belonging to the same age, and as having lived at the
same time, but perhaps in different situations, those animals whose
remains are buried in the molasse and the ancient beds of gravel in
the south of France; in the gypsum layers mingled with limestone,
similar to those in the environs of Paris and Aix, and in the marly

144 ON THE REVOLUTIONS OF

deposites of fresh water, covered by the marine beds of Alsace, the
province of Orleans, and of Berri.

This animal population has a very remarkable character in the
abundance and variety of certain genera of pachydermata, which are
unknown amongst the quadrupeds now existing, and the character-
istics of which are more or less nearly related to tapirs, rhinoceroses,
and camels.

The genera, whose discovery is entirely due to me, are—the pa-
leotheria, the lophiodonta, the anoplotheria, the anthracotheria, the
cheropotami, and the adapis.

The paleotheria resemble the tapirs in the general form, in that of
the head, and particularly in the shortness of the bones of the nose,
which proves that they had, lke the tapirs, a small proboscis; and
also in having six incisores and two canine teeth in each jaw; but
they resembled the rhinoceros in their grinders, of which the upper
ones were square, with prominent ridges differently shaped, and the
lower ones shaped like double crescents, and their feet in like manner
were divided into three toes, while the fore feet of the tapir have four
divisions.

It is one of the genera, the most distributed and numerous in
species, that are found in the layers of its particular period. Our
gypsum quarries in the environs of Paris are crowded with them. The
first (P. magnum) as large as a horse. Three resemble swine, but one
(P. medium) has narrow and long feet; one (P. crassum) with larger
feet; one (P. Jatum) with feet still larger and much more short; the
fifth species (P. curtum) of the size of a sheep, is much lower, and has
feet still larger and shorter in proportion than the iast; a sixth (P.
minus) is of the size of a small sheep and has slim feet, the lateral
toes of which are shorter than the others; and finally there is one
& minimum) not larger than a hare, which has also long and slender
feet.

They have also been found in other provinces of France; at Puy in
Velay, in the beds of gypseous marl, one species (P. velaunum), very
similar to the (P. medium), but differing from it in the formation of
the lower jaw; in the vicinity of Orleans, in the layer of marly stone,
a species (P. aurelianense) distinguished from the others by having
the returning angle of the lower grinders with the crescent cleft into
a double point, and by some difference in the prominences of the upper
grinders; near Issel, in a layer of gravel, or molasse, ‘along the decli-
vities of the Black Mountain, a species (P. tsselanum) characterised
like those of Orleans, but smaller; but principally in the molasse of

THE SURFACE OF THE GLOBE. 145

the department of the Dordogne, the paleotherium occurs not less
abundantly than in the gypsum quarries of Paris.

The Duke de Caze has discovered in the quarries of one field, bones
of three species, which appear different from all those of our envi-
rons.

The Jophiodons resemble the tapirs still more closely than the paleo-
theria do, as their lower grinders have transverse prominences like the
tapirs. They differ from them, however, because they have the front -
teeth more simple, and the back one of all has three prominences, and
the upper ones are rhomboidal and ridged similarly to those of the
rhinoceros.

“We are ignorant of the form of their muzzle and the number of
their toes. I have discovered exactly twelve species, all in France,
embedded in the marly stones, formed by the fresh-water deposites,
and filled with lymnez and planorbes, shells which are peculiar to
pools and marshes.

The largest was found near Orleans, in the same quairy as the pa-
leotheria. It closely resembles the rhinoceros.

There is another smaller species in the same place; a third is to
be found at Montpellier ; a fourth near Laon; two near Buchsweiler,
in Alsace; five near Argenton, in Berri; and one of the three is again
found near Issel, where there are two others.
large species near Gannat.

These species differ in size, which in the smallest is scarcely equal
to that of a lamb three months old, and in details in the formation of
their teeth, which it would be tedious to enter upon here.

The anoplotheria are at present only found in the gypsum quarries
in the environs of Paris. ‘They have two characteristics not observed
in any other animals; feet with two toes, of which the metacarpus
and metatarsus are distinct, and not joined in one solid piece, as in
ruminating animals; and teeth in a continuous series, without any
space intervening. Man alone has teeth so closely placed without any
gap between. Those of the anoplotheria consist of six incisores in
each jaw; one canine and seven grinders on each side, as well above
as below; their canine are short, and resemble the exterior incisores.
The first three grinders are compressed; the other four are, in the
upper jaw, square, with transverse ridges, and a small cone between
them ; and in the lower jaw, shaped like a double crescent, but with-
out any prominence at the base. The last has three crescents. Their

head is oblong, and does not announce that the muzzle has terminated
either with a proboscis or a snout.

There is also a very

146 ON THE REVOLUTIONS DF

This extraordinary species, comparable to no species now existing,
is subdivided into three sub-genera. The anoplotheria, properly so
called, the anterior grinders of which are still tolerably thick, and the
posterior of the lower jaw have a plane ridge inthe crescent. The
ziphodons, whose anterior grinders are thin and cutting, and whose
posterior in the lower jaw have, immediately opposite to the concavity
of each of their crescents, a point which by use assumes the form of the
-crescent, so that there the crescents are double, as in ruminating
animals. ‘The dichobunes, whose exterior crescents are also pointed at
the beginning, and which thus have points arranged in pairs on the
back grinders of the lower jaw.

The anoplotheria, the most common in our gypsum-quarries (A. com-
mune), is an animal as tall as a wild boar, but much larger, and witha
very long and very thick tail, so that as a whole it has nearly the pro-
perties of the otter, but much larger. Itis probable that it swam well
and frequented lakes, at the bottom of which the bones have become
incrusted by gypseous deposites. We have one smaller species, but
otherwise quite similar (An. secundarium).

We have as yet found only one ziphodon, a very remarkable animal,
which I have named An. gracile. It is slender and slightly formed, like
the most beautiful gazelle.

There is one dichobune, nearly the size of a hare, which I call An.
leporinum.

In addition to its sub-generic characteristics, it differs from the ano-
plotheria and xiphodons by having two small and slender toes on
each foot on the sides of the two large toes.

We are not aware whether these lateral toes existed in the two other
dichobunes, which are small, and scarcely exceed the Guinea pig in
size.

The genus of enthracotheria is nearly the medium between the
paleotheria, the anoplotheria, and hogs. I have thus named it, be-
cause two of its species have been found in the lignites of Cadibona,
near Savone. The first was nearly as large as the rhinoceros; the se-
cond was smaller. They are also foundin Alsace and Velay. Their
grinders are similar to those of the anoplotheria, but they have project-
ing canine teeth.

The genus cherepotamus is found in our gypsum quarries, together
with the paleotheria and anoplotheria, but itismuch more rare. The back
grinders are square at top, rectangular at bottom, and have four large
conical projections. suirounded by some smaller. The front grinders
are short cones, slightly compressed, with doubie roots ; its canine teeth

THE SURFACE OF THE GLOBE. 147

are small. We are not yet acquainted with its incisores nor its feet.
I have only one species, of the size of a Siam hog.

The genus adapis has in the same way but one species at most, not
larger than a rabbit. This is also found in our gypsum-quarries, and
must have had a close alliance with anoplotheria.

Thus we have mentionednearly forty species of pachydermata, belong-
ing to genera now quite extinct, to the sizes and shapes of which we
have no closer existing resemblance than in the tapirs and a daman.

This great number of pachydermata is the more remarkable, as the
ruminantia, now so numerous, in the genera of stags and gazelles, and
which attain so vast a size in those of oxen, giraffes, and camels, are
rarely to be found in the strata to which we have been alluding.

I have never detected the smallest relic in our gypsum-quarries, and
all that has come to me consists of some fragments of a stag, of the
size of the roebuck, but of another species, collected from the paleo-
theria of Orleans, and in one or two other small fragments from
Switzerland, both perhaps of equivocal origin.

But our pachydermata were not consequently the only inhabitants
of the countries where they lived. In our gypsum-quarries, at least,
we find with them carnivora, glires, many sorts of birds, crocodiles
and tortoises, and these two latter also accompany them in the molasse
and marly rock of the middle and south of France.

At the heed of the carnivora I placed a bat very recently disco-
vered at Montmartre, and of the proper genus vespertilio*, The exist-
ence of this genus at so remote an epoch is the more surprising, as
neither in this formation, nor in those which follow it, have I been
able to discover any trace either of chetroptera nor of quadrumana. No
bones, no tooth of monkey nor maki, however, presented themselves to
me in my long researches.

Montmartre has also produced for me the bones of a fox different
from ours, and equally different from the jackals—isatisis, and the
various species of foxes which are known in America; also the bones
of a carnivorous animal a-kin to the racoon and coaties, but larger
than any of the known- species; those of a peculiar species of civet
cat; and of two or three other carnivora which could not be deter-
mined for want of parts sufficiently perfect.°

What is yet more singular is, that there are skeletons of a small
sarigue, a-kin to the marmoset, but different, and consequently of an
animal whose genus is now confined to the new world. We have also

* JT am indebted to the Count de Bournon for my knowledge of this; and as it is
not described in my great work, I give drawings of it in Plate 2, figs. 1 and 2.

148 ON THE REVOLUTIONS OF

collected skeletons of two small glires, or the genus of the dormouse’
and a head of the squirrel genus.

Our gypsum-quarries are more prolific in bones of birds than any
of the other layers, either anterior or subsequent to its deposite. We
find whole skeletons, perfect skeletons, and parts of at least ten spe-
cies of all the orders.

The crocodiles of that age resembled our common Yorn Gs, in the _

form of the head, whilst in the layers of the epoch of the Jura forma-
tion, we only discover the species a-kin to the gavial.

There has been found at Argenton a species remarkable for its com-
pressed teeth, with sharp edges cutting like the dentated teeth of cer-
tain monitors. We also see some remains in our gypsum-quarries.

The tortoises of this age are all of fresh-water production; some
belong to the sub-genus of emydes, and there are some as well at
Montmartre as in the molasse of the Dordogne, of a greater magni-
tude than any now existing; the others are trionyces, or soft tortoises.

This genus, which is easily distinguished by the vermiculated sur-
face of the bones of its shell, and which now only exists in the rivers
of hot countries, such as the Nile, the Ganges, and the Oronoco, was
very plentiful in the same formations as the paleotheria. There are a
vast quantity of these remains at Montmartre, and in the molasse
sandstone of the Dordogne, and other gravelly deposites of the south
of France.

The fresh-water lakes about which these animals lived, and which
received their bones, nourished, besides tortoises and crocodiles, some
fishes and some shelly animals. All that have been collected are as
foreign to our climate, and even as unknown in our present waters,
as the palzotheria and other contemporary quadrupeds.

The fish even belong partly to unkuown species.

Thus, we cannot doubt but that this population, which may be
termed that of the middle age,—this first great production of mammi-
fera, has been entirely destroyed; and in fact, wherever we discover
their remains, there are above them vast marine deposites, so that the
sea must have overwhelmed the countries which these races inhabited,
and has covered them for,a very considerable period.

Were the countries thus innundated vast in extent? The investiga-
tion of the ancient beds formed in their lakes has not yet enabled us
to decide this question.

To the same epoch I attribute our gypsum beds, and those of Aix
many of the quarries of marly stones, and the molassic sandstones, at
least those of the south of France. I am also disposed to assign to the
same period, portions of the molasses of Switzerland, and the lignites

THE SURFACE OF THE GLOBE. 149

of Liguria and Alsace, in which are found quadrupeds of the families
above described; but I do not learn that any of tiese animals are
found in other countries. ‘The fossil bones of Germany, England,
and Italy, are all either older or more recent than ‘those we have enu-
merated, and belong either to that ancient race of reptiles of the Ju-
raic and copper-slate formations, or to the deposites of the last gene-
ral deluge—the diluvial layers.

We may then believe, as there is no proof of the contrary, that,
at the epoch when these numerous pachydermata existed, the globe
only afforded them, as habitations, a small number of tolerably fertile
plains, wherein they could multiply ; and perhaps these plains were
isolated regions, separated by considerable spaces of lofty chains,
where we do not find that our animals have left any vestiges of their
existence.

We have, through the researches of M. Adolphe Brongniart, be-
come acquainted with the nature of the vegetables which covered these
few countries. In the same layers with our paleotheria are collected
trunks of palm trees, and many other beautiful plants, whose genus is
now only to be found in hot climates; palm trees, crocodiles, and
trionyces are always found in’ greater or lesser numbers wherever the
ancient pachydermata are discovered.

But the sea, which had covered these countries and destroyed their
animals, left great deposites, which still form, at a trifling depth, the
basis of our great plains; then it retired again, and yielded vast sur-
faces to a new population, of which the relics are to be found in the
sandy and muddy layers of all known countries.

It is to this tranquil deposit of the sea that we should ascribe some
cetacea very much like those of the present time—a dolphin similar
to our epaulard, and a whale very similar to our rorquals—both ex- —
humed in Lombardy by M. Cortosi; a large whale’s head found in
the very centre of Paris, and described by Lamanon and by Dauben-
ton ; and a genus entirely new, which I discovered and named ziphius,
and which at least consists of three species. It is allied to the cacha-
lots and hyperoodons.

In the population which fills our post-diluvial and superficial strata,
and which has existed in the deposite we have just mentioned, there
are no longer paleotheria, anoplotheria, nor any of this peculiar genus.
The pachydermata, however, still were found there ; the gigantic pachy-
dermata, elephants, rhinoceroses, hippopotami, accompanied by innu-
merable horses, and many large ruminantia. Carnivora of the size of
lions, tigers, andihyzenas, desolated the new animal kingdom, Its

150 ON THE REVOLUTIONS OF

general character, even in the extreme north, and on the banks of our
Icy Sea, was similar to that now only presented by the torrid zone;
and yet there was no species exactly similar to those of the present
day.

Amongst these animals, in particular, was the elephant, called by
the Russians the mammoth (elephas primigenius of Blumenbach) from
fifteen to eighteen feet in height, covered with a coarse red wool, and
long black bristly hairs, which formed a mane along its back: its
enormous tusks were implanted in alveole longer than those of the
elephants of our times; otherwise it was very similar to the elephant
of India: It has left thousands of its carcases, from Spain to the bor-
ders of Siberia, and has been discovered throughout North America ;
so that it was spread over the two coasts of the Atlantic ocean, if
indeed the ocean was at that time in the place where it now flows. It is
well known that its tusks are still so well preserved in cold countries,
that they are used for the same purpose as new ivory; and, as we before
remarked, individuals have been found with the flesh, skin, and hair,
which had been frozen since the final catastrophe ef the globe. The
Tartars and Chinese have imagined it to be ‘an animal which lives
under ground, and perishes whenever it appears in daylight.

After it, and nearly equal to it, came also, in the countries forming
the two present continents, the narrow-toothed mastodon, which re-
sembled the elephant, being armed, like it, with enormous tusks, but
these tusks covered with enamel ; lower in the legs, and with grinders
mamillated and cased with a thick and shining enamel, which have
long supplied what is called the occidental turquoise.

Its remains, so common in the temperate parts of Europe, are not
found so generally in the north; but we discover them in the moun-
tains of South America, with two kindred species.

North America has an immense quantity of the remains of the great
mastodon, a species still larger than the preceding, as tall in proportion
as the elephant, with tusks not less enormous, and whose grinders, full
of sharp points, have caused it to be taken for a carnivorous animal.

Its bones were very thick, and had much solidity ; even its hoofs
and stomach are said to have been found in good preservation, and easily
recognizable. It is asserted that the stomach was filled with the
crushed branches of a tree. ‘The savages believe that this race was
exterminated by the gods, lest they should destroy the human race.

With these enormous pachydermata existed two genera rather less
than the rhinoceros and hippopotami. .

The hippopotamus of the period was common enough in the coun-

THE SURFACE OF THE GLOBE. 154

tries which now form France, Germany, and England, and particular-
ly in Italy. Its resemblance to the present African species was such
that it requires an attentive scrutiny to ascertain the distinguishing cha-
-racteristics.

There was also, at this period, a small species of hippopotamus, of
the size of a wild boar, to which we have at present nothing similar. _

The rhinoceroses of large size were at least three innumber; all double-
horned. The species most distributed over Germany (viz. Rh. tichor-
hinus), and which, like the elephant, is found to the very shores of the
Icy Sea, where entire individuals are to be discovered, had a long
head, the bones of the nose very strong, supported by an osseous junc-
tion of the nostrils, not simp!y cartilaginous, and wanted incisores.

Another species, rarer and belonging to a more temperate climate
(Rh. incisivus), had incisores like the present rhinoceros of the East
Indies, and particularly resembled that of Sumatra. Its distinctive
characteristics were to be found in a different formation of the head.

The third (RA. leptorhinus) wanted incisores, like the first and the
Cape rhinoceros of the present day; but it was distinguished by a
muzzle more pointed and limbs more slender. In Italy particularly,
its remains are found in the same strata as those of the elephants,
mastodonta, and hippopotami.

Lastly, there is a fourth species (Rh. minutus), furnished, as the
second, with incisores, but of lesser size, and scarcely larger than a
hog. It was undoubtedly rare, for its relics have only been collected
in some places in France.

To these four genera of large pachydermata may be added a tapir,
equal to them in size, and consequently twice or thrice as large in the
linear dimensions as the American tapir.

We find its teeth in many parts of France and Germany, and gene-
rally accompanied with those of the rhinoceros, mastodon, and ele-
phant.

There is still anotherto be added to these, which occurs, however,
in very few places,—a large pachyderma, of which only the lower jaw
has been found, and whose teeth were doubly crescented and modu-
lated. M. Fischer, who discovered it amongst the bones from Siberia,
has named it the elasmotherium.

The genus of the horse also existed at this period. ‘Thousands of
its teeth are found with those which we have just described, in nearly
all their deposites: but it is impossible to say whether it was or was
not of the same species as that now existing, because the skeletons of

152 ON THE REVOLUTIONS OF

this species so much resemble each other, that they cannot be deter-
mined from isolated fragments.

Ruminating animals were infinitely more numerous than at the
epoch of the palzeotheria ; their numerical proportion even must differ
but little from what it now is; but we are convinced that there were
many different species.

This we may confidently assert with respect to the stag, of superior.
size even to the elk, which is common in the mavl deposites and turf
bogs of Ireland and England, and of which remains have been disin-
terred in France, Germany, and Italy, in the same beds which contain
the bones of the elephant. Its large and branching antlers extend
twelve or fourteen feet from one point to the other, in allowing for the
curved portions.

This distinction is not so clear with respect to the bones of deerand oxen
which have been collected in certain rocks; they are (and particu-
larly in England) sometimes accompanied with the bones of the ele- -
phant, rhinoceros, and hippopotamus, and those of a hyena, which are
also met with in many layers of alluvial deposites, together with the
pachydermata: consequently they are of the same age; but there is
yet much difficulty in deciding how they differ from the present breeds
of similar animals.

The clefts of the rocks of Gibraltar, Cette, Nice, Uliveta, near Pisa,
and others on the banks of the Mediterranean, are filled with a red and
firm cement, which envelopes fragments of rock and fresh-water shells,
with many bones of quadrupeds, for the most part fractured, and which
have been called osseous breccie. The bones which fill them some-
times present characteristics sufficient to prove that they have belonged
to animals unknown at least in Europe. We find there, for instance,
four species of deer, three of which have characteristics in their teeth
observable only in the deer of the Indian Archipelago.

There is a fifth race known, near Verona, whose antlers exceed in
spread those of the deer of Canada.

We also find in particular places, with the bones of the rhinoceros
and other quadrupeds of this epoch, those of a deer so closely resem-
bling the rein-deer, that it is difficult to assign distinguishing charac-
ters to it; and what is still more extraordinary, rein-deer are confined
to the coldest climates of the north, whilst the whole genus of the rhi-
noceros belongs to the torrid zone.

There are in the layers of which we are speaking, remains of a
species very similar to the fallow-deer, but a third larger, and quanti-

a

THE SURFACE OF THE GLOBE. 153

ties of horns very much resembling those of our deer, as well as bones
very closely assimilating to those of the aurochs and those of the do-
mestic ox, two very distinct species, which former naturalists had im-
properly confounded. . However, the entire heads, like those of other
animals, as well as the musk ox of Canada, which have often been dug
up, do not come from positions sufficiently assured to enable us to de-
termine that these species were cotemporary with the great pachyder-
mata that we have above mentioned.

@ he osseous bracciz, of the banks of the Mediterranean, have also
afforded two specics of Jagomys, an animal now only existing in Sibe-
ria; two species of rabbits, lemmings, and rats of the size of the water-
rat, and that of a mouse. They are also found in the caverns of Eng-
land.

The osseous bracciz, contain even the bones of shrew mice and
lizards.

There are in certain sandy strata of Tuscany, the teeth of a porcu-
pine, and in those of Russia, the head of a species of beaver larger
than ours, which Mr. Fischer calls trogontherium. But it is principally
in the class Edentata, that these races of animals, prior to the last
period, assume a size much greater than that of the present congene-
rate species and attain even a gigantic size.

The megatherium unites one portion of the generic character of the
armadilloes with a portion of that of the sloth, and in size it equals
the largest rhinoceros. Its nails must have been of monstrous length
and power; all its frame has vast solidity. It has yet only been
found in the sandy strata of North America.

The megalonyr resembled it much in its characteristics, but was
somewhat less ; its nails were longer and sharper. Some of its bones
and entire toes have been found in certain caverns in Virginia, and in
an island on the coast of Georgia.

These two enormous edentata have only deposited their remains in
America; but Europe possessed one which did not yield to them in
bulk. It is not known by a single terminating toe-joint ; but this is
sufficient to convince us that it very much resembled a pangolin, but a
pangolin is nearly twenty feet long. It lived in the same districts as
the elephant, the rhinoceros, and the immense tapir; for we. find its
bones with theirs in a sandy layer near Darmstadt, not far from the
Rhine.

The osseous bracciz also contain, but very rarely, bones of carnivora,
much more numerous in caverns, that is to say, in cavities larger and
more complicated than the clefts or veins containing osseous braccie.

VOL. I, Q

154 ON THE REVOLUTIONS OF

The Jura formation particularly is celebrated for them, in that part
which extends into Germany, where for ages incredible quantities have
been carried off and destroyed, because peculiar medical properties
have been assigned to them, and there is sufficient remaining to
astound the imagiuation. They are principally bones of a species of
very large bear (ursus speleus) characterised by a rounder forehead
than that of any of our living bears; with these bones are mingled
those of two other species of bears (U. arctoideus et U. priscus),
those of a hyena, (H. /ossi/is) allied to the spotted Cape hyena, but
differing in certain details of its teeth, and the form of its head;~
those of two tigers or panthers, those of a wolf, those of a fox, those of
a glutton, those of weasels, civets, and other small carnivora.

We may remark here, that singular association of animals of which
those similar live now in climates as distant as the Cape, the country
of the spotted hyenas, and Lapland, the country of our gluttons. And
we have thus seen in a cavern in France, a rhinoceros and a rein-deer
beside each other.

Bears rarely occur in alluvial strata, though they are said to have
been found in Austria and Hainault, of the large species discovered in
caves, and there is one in Tuscany of a peculiar species, remarkable
for its compressed canine teeth (U. culiridens); hyenas are found there
more frequently. . We have discovered them in France with the bones
of elephants and rhinoceroses. A short time since a cavern was dis-
coyered in England which contained prodigious quantities of them, of
all ages, and in the soil even the excrements were plainly to be recog-
nized. They must have lived there for a long period, and they had
dragged into their cave the bones of the elephants, rhinoceroses, hippo-
potami, horses, oxen, deer, and of yarious glires which are there min-
gled with their own remains, and bear evident marks of the tooth of
the hyenas. But what must have been the soil of England when these
enormous animals served as prey to these ferocious beasts? These
caverns also contain the bones of tigers, wolves and foxes; but those
of the bear are of extremely rare occurrence *.

However this may be, we see that at the period of the animal popu-
lation, now under our consideration, the class of carnivora was numer-
ous and powerful. Jt had three bears with rounded canine teeth ;
one bear with compressed canine teeth, a large tiger or lion, another
of the felis tribe of the size of a panther, a hyena, a wolf, a fox, a elut-
ton, a martin, or polecat, and a weasel.

* See Mr. Buckland’s admirable work ‘ Reliquie Diluviane.’

THE SURFACE OF THE GLOBE. 155

The class of glires, composed generally of a weak and small species,
has had but little notice from fossil collectors ; and yet its remains, in
the layers and deposites of which we are treating, have also presented
unknown species, such in particular is a species of lagomys of the os-
seous hraccize of Corsica and Sardinia, somewhat similar to the Alpine
lagomys of the high mountains of Siberia; so true is it, that it is not
in the torrid zone that we must always seek for animals resembling
those of the epoch preceding the last general catastrophe.

These are the principal animals whose remains have been discovered
in that mass of earth, of sand and of mud, in that diluvium, which
everywhere covers our vast plains, fills our caverns, and chokes up the
fissures of many of our large rocks. They formed most indubitably
the population of the continents at the epoch of the great catastrophe
which has destroyed their race, and which prepared the soil on which
the animals of the present day subsist. Whatever resemblance cer-
tain of the species of the present day offer to them, it cannot be dis-
puted that the total of this population had a totally distinct character,
and that the majority of the races which composed it have been anni-
hilated.

It is wonderful, that among all these mammifera, of which at the pre-
sent day the greater part have a congenerate species in the warm cli-
mates, there has not been one quadrumanous animal, not a single
bone, or a single tooth of a monkey, not even a bone or a tooth of an
extinct species of this animal.

Neither is there any remains of man. All the bones of the human
race which have been collected along with those which we have
spoken of, have been the result of accident *, and besides their
number is extremely small, which it certainly would not be if men
had then been established in the countries inhabited by these ani-
mals. Where then was the human race? Did the last and most per-
fect work of the Creator exist nowhere? Did the animals which now
accompany him on earth, and of which there are no fossil remains
to be traced, surround him? Have the lands in which they lived
together been swallowed up, when those which they now inhabit, and
of which, a great inundation might have destroyed the anterior popu-
lation, were again left dry? On this head the study of fossils gives

* See, in Mr. Buckland’s ‘ Reliquie Diluviane,’ an account of the skeleton of a
female found in a cave in Pavyland; and in my‘ Recherches,’ v. iv. p. 193, concern-
ing a fragment of a jaw found in the osseous breccie, at Nice.

M. de Schlotheim collected human bones in the fissures of Keestritz, where there
are also rhinoceros bones; but he himself is doubtful as to the epoch of their de-
position,

a3

156 ON THE REVOLUTIONS, &c.

us no information, and in this Discourse we must not seek an answer to
our question from other sources,

It is certain, that we are at present at least in the midst of a fourth
succession of terrestial animals, and that after the age of reptiles, after
that of palotheria, after that of mammoths, mastodonta and megatheria,
the age arrived in which the human species, together with some do-
mestic animals, governs and fertilizes the earth peaceably; and it is
only in formations subsequent to this period, in alluvial deposites, in
turf-bogs, in the recent concretions, that those bones are found in a
fossil state, which all belong to animals known and now existing.

Such are the human skeletons of Gaudaloupe, incrusted in a species
of travatine with land shells, slate and fragments of the shells and ma-
drepores of the neighbouring sea; the bones of oxen, deer, roebucks,
and beavers of common occurrence in turf-bogs, and all bones of the
human race, and of domestic animals found in the cep of rivers,
in burial grounds, and in fields of battle.

None of these remains belong either to the vast deposite of the great
catastrophe, or to those of the ages preceding that wonderful event.

APPENDIX

TO THE

DISCOURSE ON THE REVOLUTIONS OF THE SURFACE
OF THE GLOBE.

DESCRIPTION OF THE BIRD CALLED THE IBIS BY THE
ANCIENT EGYPTIANS.

Every one has heard of the Ibis, the bird to which the ancient Egypti-
ans paid religious worship; which they brought up in the interior of
their temples, which they allowed to stray unharmed through their
cities, and whose murderer, even though involuntary, was punished by
death *; which they embalmed with as mnch care as their own
parents. To this bird was attributed a virgin purity; an inviolable
attachment to their country, of which they were made the emblem—
an attachment of such force, that they would die with huuger, if re-
moved elsewhere; a bird which possessed sufficient instinct to know
the increase and wane of the moon, and regulated accordingly the
quantity of its Caily nourishment, and the development of its young;
which checked, at the very frontiers of Egypt, the serpents which
would have carried destruction into this sacred land}, and inspired
them with so much terror, that they even feared their feathers ; this
bird, whose form the gods themselves would have assumed, if compelled
to adopt a mortal shape, and into which Mercury was really transformed
when he desired to travel over the earth, and teach men the arts and
sciences.

Not any other animal could be as easily recognizable as this one;
for there is no other of which the ancients have left us, as they have of
the ibis, such admirable descriptions, figures so exact and even co-
loured, and the body itself carefully preserved with its feathers under
the triple covering of a bituminous preservation of thick linen, in
many folds, and in vessels solid and highly varnished.

And yet, of all modern writers who have spoken of the ibis, Bruce
alone—a traveller more celebrated for his courage, than the accuracy
of his notions on natural history—has not been in error regarding the

* Herod. 1, 2.
+ Aslian, lib. 2, c. xxxv and xxxviii,
a3 Toid, lib. xxxviiii.

158 as ON THE IBIS.
true species of this bird; and his ideas in this respect, exact as they
were, have not been adopted by other naturalists*.

After many changes of opinion concerning the ibis, it was apparently
agreed, at the period when I published the first edition of this work, to
give the name of ibis to a bird, a native of Africa, nearly the size of
the stork, with white plumage, and the plumes of the wings black,
perched on long red legs, with a long beak, arched with cutting edges,
rounded at the base, jagged at the point, of a pale yellow colour, and
with its face covered with a red skin, without plumage, which does not
go farther than its eyes.

Such is the ibis of Perraultt, the white ibis of Brisson{, the white
ibis of Egypt of Buffon, and the tantalus ibis of Linnzeus, in his
twelfth edition.

It was to this very bird that M. Blumenbach, at the same time con-
fessing its rarity at the present day, at least in Lower Egypt, asserted
that the Egyptians paid divine honours ||; and yet M. Blumenbach
had an opportunity of examining the skeleton of a real mummy ibis,
which he opened in London{. I was in the same error as these
learned men whom I have just mentioned, until I had an OPEOTNEEEy
of examining by myself some mummies of the ibis.

This pleasure was first procured for me by the late M. Fourcroy, to
whom M. Grobert, colonel of artillery, returning from Egypt, had
given two of these mummies, both taken from the pits of Saccara. On
unfolding them carefully, we perceived that the bones of the embalmed
bird were much smaller than those of the tantalus ibis of naturalists;
that they were but very little larger than those of the curlew; that the
beak resembled that of the latter, only being somewhat shorter in pro-
portion to its thickness, and not at all similar to that of the tantalus ;
in fact, that its plumage was white, with the plumes of the wing
marked with black, as stated by the ancients.

Ve were then convinced that the bird embalmed by the ancient

* Bruce’s French translation, in 8vo. v. xiii, p. 264, and Atlas plate xxxv, under
the name Abouhanzes. :

+ Description of an ibis, and two storks. Acad. des Sciences of Paris, yv. iii
pl. ili, p. 61, 4to. ed. 1754, pl. xiii, fig. 1. The beak is represented as fame at
the end, a fault of the engraver.

+ Numenius sordide albo rufescens, capite anteriore nudo rubro; lateribus rubro
purpureo et carneo colore maculatis, remigibus majoribus nigris, rectricibus sordide
albo rufescentibus, rostro in excrtu dilute luteo, in extremitate aurantio, pedibus
aS Tbis candida LASS Ornithologie, vol. 5, p. 349. ,

§ ‘ Planches Enluminées,’ num. 389. Hist. des Oincoas V. Vill, in 4to. p. 14,
pl. 1. The last figure is copied from Perrault, with the same fault. ‘

|| Handbuch der Naturgeschichte, p. 203, of the edit. 1799, but in the edifion of
1807, he has restored the name of ibis to the bird to which it belongs.

q Philosophical Tranactions, for 1794.

ON THE IBIS. 159

Egyptians was certainly not the tantalus ibis of naturalists; that it
was smaller, and that it must be of the curlew genus.

We learnt, after some research, that the ibis mummies opened be-
fore by other naturalists were similar to our own. Buffon expressly
says, that he had examined many ; that the birds they contained had
the beak and size of curlews, and yet he blindly follows Perrault, in
taking the tantalus of Africa for the ibis.

One of these mummies opened by Buffon is still in the Museum,
and is similar to those which we have opened.

Dr. Shaw in the supplement to his travels (fol. edit. Oxford, 1746,
plate 5, pp. 64 to 66), describes and depicts with care the bones of a
similar mummy ; the beak, he says, was six English inches in length,
like that of the curlew, &c. In a word, his account exactly tallies with
our own examination.

Caylus (Recueil d’ Antiquités, vol. vi. pl. 11, fig. 1), represents the
mummy ibis as only one foot seven inches high, including its ban-
dages, although he expressly says, that the bird was then placed on its
feet, with the head erect, and that no part of it had been bent in the
embalming.

Hasselquist, who took a small black and white heron for the ibis,
gives as his principal reason, that the size of this bird, which is that of
a crow, corresponds very well with the size of the mummies of the
ibis*. How then could Linneus give the name of ibis to a bird as
large as a stork? How indeed could he consider this bird as the same
with the ardea ibis of Hasselquist, which, besides its smallness, had a
straight beak? And how could this latter error of synomy have been
perpetuated in the Systema Nature, down to the present time?

A short time after the examination made with M. Fourcroy, M.
Olivier, had the complaisance to show us some bones which he had
brought from two mummies of the ibis; and to open two others with
us. The bones there found resembled those of the mummies of
Colonel Grobert, only one of the four was smaller, but it was easy to
judge by the epiphyses, that it had belonged to a young individual.

The only drawing of the beak of an embalmed ibis, which does not
entirely agree with those which we examined, was that of Edwards
(plate cv); it is aninth larger, and yet we do not question its accuracy ;
for M. Olivier shewed us also the length, an eighth or ninth longer
than the others, in proportion of 180 to 165 equally taken from a
mummy.

This beak only shows that there were among the ibis species, indi-
nnn. OF aces SOA MN RANEY Mle URE: oeiide Wut Ades ange rele Audley ga

* Hasselquist iter Palestinum, p. 249, magnitudo gallinez, seu cornicis, and p.
250, vasa que in sepulcris inveniuntur, cum ayibus conditis, hujus sunt magnitudinis

160 ON THE IBIS,

viduals larger than others, but proves nothing in favour of the tantalus,
for it has not the same shaped beak as that; it precisely resembles the /
curlew; and, besides, the beak of the tantalus is a third larger than that
of our large embalmed ibises, and two-fifths that of the smallest.

We are moreover assured that there are similar variations in the size
of our European curlews, according to age and sex; they are still
larger in the green curlews of Italy, and in our pewits (darges); and
it appears that this is a property common to the greater part of the
species of long-billed (becasses) birds.

Finally, our naturalists returned from the expedition to Egypt with
a rich harvest of objects, ancient as wellas modern. My learned friend
M. Geoffroy St. Hilaire particularly occupied himself in collecting, with
great care, mummies of every sort, and had brought a great number of
those of the ibis, as well from Saccara as from Thebes.

The former were in the same state as those brought by M. Grobert ;
that is to say, that their bones had experienced a kind of half combus-
tion, and were without consistency; they broke on the least touch, and
it was very difficult to procure one entire, still more to detach them so
as to form a skeleton,

The bones of those of Thebes were much better preserved, either
from the greater heat of the climate, or from the greater care be-
stowed in their preparation: and M. Geoffroy having sacrificed se-
veral of them, my assistant, M. Rousseau, contrived, by the exercise -
of patience, skill, and ingenious and delicate methods, to form an
entire skeleton, by stripping all the bones, and uniting them with
a fine wire thread. This skeleton has been placed in the museum,
of which it forms one of the most striking ornaments. We subjoinan
engraving of it. See Plate 4.

We remark that this mummy must have been that of one kept ina
state of domesticity in the temples; for the left shoulder has been
broken and then united. It is probable that a wild bird, whose wing
was broken, would die before it healed, for want of strength to pursue
its prey, or power to escape from its enemies.

This skeleton enables us to determine unhesitatingly the character
and proportions of the bird; we clearly see that it was in every re-
spect a real curlew, rather larger than that of Europe, but with its
beak thicker and shorter. We subjoin a comparative table of the di-
mensions of these two birds, taken, for the Ibis, from the skeleton of
the mummy of Thebes, and for the Curlew, from a skeleton which was
formerly in our anatomical galleries. We have added those of the -
parts of the ibises of Saccara which we have been enabled to obtain
entire.

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162 ON THE IBIS.

We sce by this table that the ibis of Thebes was larger than our
curlew; that one of the ibises of Saccara was of the medium’ size be-
tween that of Thebes and our curlew ; and that the other was smaller
than this latter bird. We observe also, that the different parts of the
body of the ibis have not the same proportions to each other as those
of the curlew have. The beak of the former, for instance, is re-
markably shorter, although all the other parts are larger, &c.

Yet these differences of proportion do not go beyond what may dis-
tinguish the species of the same genus; the form and character which
are to be considered as generic, are precisely similar.

The true ibis, then, must be sought no longer amongst these tall
tantali with a sharp beak, but amongst the curlews; and here we
should note that by the word curlew (courlis) we do not mean the
artificial genus formed by Latham and Gmelin, of all long-shanked
(echassiers) birds, with a beak curved downwards, and a head devoid
of plumage, whether their beak be rounded or sharp, but a natural
genus, which we shall call nwmenius, and which will include all the
long-shanked birds with beaks curved downwards, soft and rounded,
whether their head be devoid of, or covered with plumage. It is the
curlew genus, such as Buffon has imagined it *.

A glance over the collection of birds in the king’s cabinet enables us
to recognise a species which has not been yet either named or de-
scribed by authors of systems, except perhaps Mr. Latham, and which,
examined with care, will satisfy us as being the same with those which
the ancient monuments and mummies have given as the characteristics
of the ibis.

We add an engraving of it. See Plate V.

It is a bird rather larger than the curlew; its beak is curved in a
manner similar to that of the curlew, but rather shorter, and much
thicker in proportion, a little flattened towards the base, and marked
at each side with a furrow which proceeds from the nostril to the
extremity, while in the curlew the corresponding furrow is effaced
before it reaches midway down the beak. ‘The colon of this beak is
more or less black. The head and two-thirds of the beak are entirely
destitute of feathers, and the skin is black. The body feathers, those
of the wings and tail are white, with the exception of the ends of the
large wing-feathers, which are black; the four last secondary feathers
have remarkably long beards, spread out,which fall upon the ends of the
wings when closed; their colour isa brilliant black with a violet shade.

* We have definitely established this genus in our ‘ Regne Animal,’ vol. i, p. 483,
and it appears to have been adopted by naturalists.

ON THE IBIS. 168

The feet are black, the legs thicker, and the toes evidently longer
in proportion than those of the curlew ; the membranes between the
bases of the toes are also more extended; the leg is wholly covered
with small polygonal scales, or what are called reticulated; and the
back of the toes even has only similar scales, whilst the curlew has
two-thirds of the legs and the whole of the toes, scutulated, that is,
furnished with transverse scales. There is a reddish hue under the
wing, towards the commencement of the thigh, and on the covers of
the large anterior wing; but this tint appears to be an individual cha-
racteristic, or the result of accident; for it does not appear in any
other individuals otherwise precisely similar.

This first individual came from the collection of the stadtholder,
and we do not know its native country. The late M. Desmoulins,
assistant naturalist at the museum, who had seen two others, said that
they came from Senegal. One of them must have been’ brought by
M. Geoffroy di Villeneuve. But we shall presently find that Bruce *
found this species in Ethiopia, where it is called Abou Hannés (Father
John); and that Savigny saw it in abundance in Lower Egypt, where
it is called Abou Mengel (Father of the Sickle,) It is probable that
. the moderns will not take the assertion of the ancients literally, that
the ibis never quitted its own country without perishing f.

This assertion would besides be as contrary to the tantalus ibis, as
to our curlew; for the individuals which we have in Europe came from
Senegal. It was then that M. Geoffroy de Villeneuve brought that
now in the museum of natural history; it is even much more rare in
Egypt than our curlew, since no one after Perrault mentions having
seen it there, or received one from thence.

An individual without the reddish hue, but otherwise entirely simi-
lar to the first, was brought home by M. de Labillardiére, after his
voyage in Australasia with M. d’Entrecasteaux.

We have since learnt that this sort of numenius has, when young,
the head and neck furnished with feathers on those parts, which, as
they advance in age, become denuded, and that the scapularies are less
expanded, and of a paler and duller black. It is in this state that the
late M. Peron brought one from Australasia, which did not differ from
our ownand that of M.de Labillardiére, except in some black lines on the
early feathers, and the first coverings of the wings, and the head and
top of the neck were ornamented with blackish plumage. A young
individual brought by M. Savigny from Egypt, and depicted in the

* Bruce, loc. cit.; and Sevigny, Mem. sur l’ibis, p. 12.
+ Aéflian, lib. 2, cap. xxxvili.

164 ON THE IBIS.

first plate in his Memoir of the Ibis, and in the great work on Egypt
« Birds,” plate 7. The feathers of the head and back of the neck are
rather grey than black, and those of the front of the neck are white.
Finally, Bruce’s drawing, in his Atlas, plate 35, was also made from
a young individual seen in Abyssinia, and nearly similar to that of
M. Savigny.

We have received from Pondicherry, by M. Leschenault, an indi-
vidual resembling that of Peru, of which only the head, and a small
part of the back of the neck, are covered with white feathers; but it is
not less certain that all these birds have the head and neck bare when
they reach their full growth.

The late M. Macé sent from Bengal to the museum, many individu-
als of a species closely allied to this, of which’the beak is rather longer
and less curved; the first feather only has a little black on two sides
of its extremity, and the secondary feathers are also rather extended
and lightly tinged with black.

According to M. Savigny (page 25 of his work) it appears that M.
le Vaillant has observed another, which has also the secondary feathers
extended, but which always preserves its feathers, and whose face is
of a red colour.

The same M. Macé also sent a tantalus, closely resembling that
which naturalists have regarded as the ibis, but the small wing-cover-
ing of which, and a large band below the breast, are black, speckled
with white. The lower secondary feathers are lengthened, and of a
white colour. We know that in the tantalus ibis of naturalists, the
small wing-coverings are speckled with lilac, and that the under part
of the body is entirely white.

We add a table of the parts of some of these birds, which we have
been able to measure accurately in stuffed individuals. If we compare
them with those of the skeletons of the ibis mummies, we shall judge
how impossible it was for an instant to believe that these were the
mummies of the tantalus.

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166 ON THE IBIS.

If we examine the books of the ancients and their monuments, and
compare what they have said concerning the ibis, or the figures they
have left of it, with the bird we have just described, we shall find all
our difficulties vanish, and all testimonies agree with the best of all,
that is, the body of the bird itself, preserved it its mummy state.

Herodotus says (in his Euterpe, No. 76), “‘ The most common ibises
have the head and front of the neck denuded, the plumage white, ex-
cept on the head, on the nape of the neck, the ends of the wings, and
the rump, which are black. The beak and feet resemble those of the
other ibises;’’ and he had said of these ‘‘ They are of the size of the
crow, of an entirely black colour, and have feet like those of the crane,
with a crooked beak.”

How does it occur that the travellers of modern days do not give
us descriptions of birds as accurate as that which Herodotus has made
of the ibis?

How can this description be applied to a bird which has only the
face denuded, and of a red colour, to a bird which has the rump white,
and not covered as ours by the black feathers of its wings ?

And yet the last characteristic was essential to the ibis. Plutarch
says (de Iside et Osiride), that the form of a lunar crescent was to be
found in the manner in which the white was cut by the black in the
plumage of this bird. It was, in fact, by the union of the black of
these latter wing-feathers with that of the two extremities of the
wings, that there is formed in the white a large semicircular indention
which gives to the white the appearance of a crescent.

It is now difficult to explain what he meant, by saying that the feet
of the ibis formed an equilateral triangle with its beak. But we can
understand the assertion of A®lian, that when it draws back its head
and neck into its feathers, it has something of the appearance of a
heart *. It was thence, according to Horus Apollo (c. 35), made the
emblem of the human heart.

According to what Herodotus says of the nudity of the throat, and
of the feathers which covered the upper part of the neck, he seems to
have had in his eye an individual of a middle age, but it is no less
certain that the Egyptians knew also very well those individuals with
the neck entirely denuded. We see such represented from sculptures
of bronze in the collection of Egyptian antiquities of Caylus (vol. i, pl.
10, No. 4; and vol. v, pl. 11, No. 1). This latter figure so much re-
sembles the bird given in pl. 5, that we may think it was taken from it.

* Ailian, lib. x, cap. xxix.

ON THE IBIS, 167

The paintings of the Herculaneum leave no species in doubt. The
paintings, No. 138 and 140, of David's edition, and vol. ii, p- 315, No.
59, and p, 821, No. 60, of the original edition, which represent Egyp-
tian ceremonies, have many ibises walking in the courts of the temples.
They are exactly similar to the bird that we have pointed out. We
recognize particularly the characteristic blackness of the head and
neck, and we easily see by the proportion of their figure with the per-
sons of the picture, that it must have been a bird of half a metre at the
most, and not a metre or nearly so, as the tantalus ibis.

The mosaic of Palestrina also presents in its middle part many ibises
perched on the buildings; and they differ in no respect from those of
the paintings of Herculaneum.

A sardonyx in the collection of Dr. Mead, copied by Shaw, App. pl.
5, and representing an ibis, seems to be the minature of the bird we
have described.

A medal of Adrian, in large bronze, represented in the Farnesian
Museum, vol, vi, pl. 28, fig. 6, and another of the same emperor, in
silver, represented in vol. iii, pl. 6, fig. 9, gives us figures of the ibis,
which, in spite of their smallness, are very similar to our birds.

As to the figures of the ibis engraved on the plinth of the statue of
the Nile, at Belvedere, and on the copy of it in the garden of the
Tuileries, they are not sufficiently finished to serve as proofs; but
amongst the hieroglyphics of which the Institute of Egypt has
caused impressions to be taken on the spot, there are many which
decidedly represent our bird. We give one of these impressions com-
municated by M. Geoffroy (Plate 6).

We particularly insist on this latter figure, because it is the most
fully authenticated of all; having been made at the time and on the
spot where the ibis was worshipped, and being cotemporaneous with its
mummies; whilst those we have above cited, done in Italy, and by
artists who did not profess the Egyptian worship, may not be so
accurate.

We owe Bruce the justice of saying, that he detected the bird which
he has described under the name of abouhannes, as the real ibis. He
expressly says, that this bird appeared to him to resemble that which
the mummy pitchers contained; he also says, that this abouhannes,
or Father John, is well known and common on the banks of the Nile,
whilst 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, also
assures us that he never discovered the tantalus in this country, but he
found many of our numentus near the lake Menzale, in Lower Egypt,
and he brought their relics away with him.

168 ON THB IBIS.

The abouhannes has been placed by M. Latham in his Index Ornitho-
logicus, under the name of tantalus Aithiopicus; but he makes no
mention of the conjecture of Bruce on its identity with the ibis.

Travellers before and after Bruce appear to have all been in error.

Belon thought that the white ibis was the stork, thereby evidently
contradicting all testimonies ; and none have been of his opinion except
the apothecaries, who took the stork for an emblem, confounding it
with the ibis to whom they attributed the invention of clysters *.

Prosper Alpinus, who relates that this invention was due to the ibis,
gives no description of this bird in his medicine of the Egyptians fF.
In his Natural History of Egypt, he only speaks of it from Herodotus,
to whose words he only adds, doubtless after a passage of Strabo, to
which | shall recur presently, that this bird resembles the stork in size
and figure. He says, that he was told that they were found in abun-
dance, both white and black, on the banks of the Nile; but it is evident
by his expressions, that he did not think they had been seen f.

Shaw says of the ibis§, that it is now excessively rare, and that he
had never seen one. His emseesy, or ox-bird, which Gmelin very im-
properly makes to correspond with the tantalus ibis, is the size of the
curlew, white bodied and with red beak and feet. It is found in the
fields near cattle ; its flesh is not well flavoured, and soon.decays ||. It
is easy to perceive that it is not the tantalus, and still less the ibis of
the ancients.

Hasselquist neither knew the white ibis, nor the black ibis; his
ardea ibis is a small heron with a straight beak. Linneus (tenth
edition), has correctly placed it amongst the heron tribe; but*he was
in error, as I have already remarked, in afterwards removing it as
synonymous with the tantalus genus.

De Maillet (Descrip. de l’Egypte, part 2, p. 23), conjectures that
the ibis may be a bird peculiar to Egypt, and which is there called
Pharaoh’s fowl (chapon de Pharaoh), and at Aleppo Saphan-bacha. It
devours serpents. There are a black and white species, and it follows,
for more than a hundred leagues, the caravans going from Cairo to
Meccea, to feed on the carcasses of the animals which are killed on
the journey, whilst at any other season not one of them is to be seen
on this route. But the author does not consider this as certain; he

* Alian, lib. ii, cap. xxxv. Phil. de Solest. An. Cic. de Nat. Deor. lib. ii. Phil. de

Anim. Prop. 16 cte.
+ De Med. Agypt. lib. i, fol. v. i. Ed. Paris, 1646.
t Recherches Egypt. lib. iv., cap. i, vol. i, p. 199, of the Leyden edit. 1735.
§ See French translation, v. ii. p. 167.
{| See Shaw’s French translation, vol. 1, p. 330.

ON THE IBIS. 169

even says that we must give up the idea of understanding the ancients
when they speak so as to seem unwilling to be understood. He
concludes that the ancients have perhaps indiscriminately comprised
under the name of ibis, all those birds which were serviceable to Egypt
in clearing it of the dangerous reptiles which the climate abundantly
produced ; such as the vulture, falcon, stork, sparrow hawk, &c.

He was right in not considering his Pharaoh’s fowl as the ibis; for,
though the description is very imperfect, and Buffon believed that he
detected the ibis in it, it is easily seen, as well as by what Pococke says
of it, that this bird must have been carnivorous; and, in fact, we see
by the figure given by Bruce (vol. v, p. 191, of the French edition),
that Pharaoh’s fowl was only the rachama, or small white vulture, with
black wings (vultur perenopterus of Linnzeus) a bird very different from
that which we have above proved to be the ibis.

Pococke says, that it appears by the descriptions givén of the ibis,
and by the figures which he had seen of it in the temples of Upper
Egypt, that it was a species of crane. I have seen, he adds, a quan-
tity of these birds in the islands of the Nile; they were for the most
part of a greyish colour (French translation, ed. 12mo. vol. ii. p. 158).
These few words are enough to prove that he did not know the ibis
better than the others.

The learned have not been more fortunate in their conjectures than
the travellers. Middleton compares with the ibis, a bronze figure of
a bird with a short curved beak, the neck very long, and the head orna-
mented with a small crest, a’ figure which never had any similarity to
the bird of the Egyptians (Antiq. Mon. pl. 10, p. 129). This figure,
besides, is not at all in the Egyptian style, and Middleton himself
agrees that it must have been made at Rome. Saumaise, on Solinus,
says nothing which relates to the real question.

As to the black ibis, which Aristotle places near Pelusium only *, it
was long thought that Belom alone had seen itt. ‘The bird described
by him 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,
with red beak and feet{; but as he makes no mention of the ibis in
his journey§, I suspect that it was only in France that he made this
relation of the two, and by comparison with the ibis mummies. It
is certain that the curlew with red beak and feet, was unkuown in

* Hist. Anim. lib. ix, cap. xxvii, and lib. x, cap. xxx.

+ Buffon’s Hist. Natur. des Oiseaux, in 4to. vol. viii, p. 17.

¢ Belon. Nat. des Oiseaux, pp. 199 and 200; and Portraits d’Oiseaux, fol. v. 44.
§ Observations de plusieurs singularités, &c.

VOL, I. EK

170 ON THE IBIS.

Egypt*, but that the green curlew of Europe (Scolopax falcinellus of
Linnzus) is commonly seen there, and is even more plentiful than the
white numenius }; and as it resembles it in form and size, and that at
a distance its plumage may appear black, we can hardly doubt but this
was the real black ibis of the ancients. M.Savigny had a painting
made of it in Egypt {, but only from a young individual. The figure
of Buffon is from a full-grown bird, but the colours are too bright.

The mistake which at present prevails respecting the ibis, originated
with Perrault, who was the first naturalist who made known the tan-
talus ibis of the present day. This error, adopted by Brisson and
Buffon, has passed into the twelfth edition of Linnzus, where it is
mixed with that of Hasselquist, which had been inserted in the tenth,
forming together a most monstrous compound.

It was founded, under the idea that the ibis was essentially a bird
inimical to serpents, and in this very natural conclusion, that a sharp
beak was necessary to devour serpents, and more or less analogous to
that of the stork or heron. The idea is even the only good objection
that can be adduced against the identity of our bird with the ibis.
How, it is asked, could a curlew, a bird with a weak beak, devour
these dangerous reptiles ?

Our answer is, that positive proofs, such as descriptions, figures
and mummies, should always claim more belief than accounts of pecu-
liar habits, too often devised without any other motive, than to justify
the various worships paid to animals. We might add, that the ser-
pents from which the ibises freed Egypt, are represented as very nu-
merous, but not as very large. I believe, too, that I have ascertained
decidedly, that the bird mummies, which had a beak precisely similar
to that of our bird, were real serpent-eaters ; for I found in one of their
mummies the undigested remains of the skin and scales of serpents,
which I have preserved in our anatomical galleries.

But, at the present time, M. Savigny, who has observed whilst
living, and even more than once disseeted our white numenius, the
bird which everything proves to have been the ibis, asserts that it only
eats worms, fresh-water shell-fish, and other similar ‘small animals.
Supposing that there is no exception to this, all we can conclude is,
that the Egyptians, as has before occurred to them and others, gave a

false reason for an absurd worship. It is true, that Herodotus said,
that he saw in a place on the borders of the desert §, near Buto, a

* Savigny. Mem. sur l’Ibis, p. 37.

+ Idem, ibid.

t See the great work on Egypt. Hist. Nat. des Oiseaux, pl. 7., fig. 2.

§ Euterpe. cap. Ixxv. Herodotus says, a place in Arabia; but we cannot see how
aplace of Arabia could be near the city of Buto.which was in the western part of the

Delta.

ON THE IBIS. 171

narrow defile, in which an infinite quantity of bones and remains,
which he was told were the relics of winged serpents, which sought to
penetrate into Egypt at the beginning of spring, and that the ibis
stopped their progress; but he does not say that he witnessed their
combats, nor that he had seen these winged serpents in a perfect state.
The whole of his testimony consists then in having observed a mass of
bones, which might have been those of this multitude of reptiles and
other animals which the inundation destroyed every year, and whose
carcasses it would naturally convey to the points where it stopped, to
the borders of the desert, and which would accumulate more abund-

antly in a narrow defile. ;

Yet it is in consequence of this idea of the combat of the ibis with
the serpents, that Cicero gives a hard and horny beak to this bird *.
Having never been in Egypt, he figured to himself that it must be so
by analogy.

I am aware that Strabo says, that some part of the ibis resembles
the stork in shape and height +, and that this author ought to have
known this well, since he assures us that in his time the streets and
crossways of Alexandria were so filled with them, that they were a se-
rious inconvenience; but he spoke from memory. His testimony can-
not be received when he contradicts all others, and particularly when
the bird itself is there to disprove it.

Tn like manner I shall not concern myself about a passage of
Elian {, who states (like the Egyptian enbalmers) that the intestines
of the ibis were ninty-six cubits in length. The Egyptian priests of
all classes have given such extravagant descriptions of natural history,
that we cannot make of much consequence whatever one of the lower
order might assert.

Another objection may be made against me, drawn from the long
extending and black feathers which cover the rump of our bird, and of
which we detect some traces in the abowhannes of Bruce.

The ancients, it may be said, say nothing of it in their descriptions,
and their figures of it do not represent them. ButI have, to back my
assertion, more than a written testimony or a traced image. I have ~
found precisely similar feathers in one of the mummies of Saccara; I
preserve them most carefully, as being at once a singular monument of
antiquity, and a proof undeniable of the identity of the species. These
feathers having an uncommon form, and not being found, I believe, in

* Avis excelsa, cruribus rigidis, corneo proceroque rostro. Cic. de Nat. Doer.
lib. i.

+ Strab. lib. xvii.

+ fBlian, Anim. lib. x, cap. 29.

971 ON THE IBIS.

any other curlew, leave in fact, no doubt, of the accuracy of my opinion.

I conclude this memoir by a recapitulation of its results.

lst. The tantalus ibis of Linnzeus should form a genus distinct from
the tantalus loculator. Their character will be rostrwm leve, vali-
dum, arcuatum, apice utrinque emarginaium.

Qnd. The other tantili of the latter editions should form a genus
with the common curlews, and may be called the mumenius. ‘Their
character will be rostrum teres, gracile, arcuatum, apice mutico, for
the special character of the subgenus of the ibises we must add, sulco
hiterali per totum longitudinem ewarato.

ord. The white ibis of the ancients is not the ibis of Peraultand Buffon,
which is a tantalus ; nor the ibis of Hasselquist, which is an ardea;
nor the ibis of Maillet, which is a vuliwre; but a bird of the genus
numenius, or curlew, of the subgenus ibis, which has only hitherto
been described by Bruce, under the name of abouhannes. I name it
NUMENIUs 1B1s, albus, capite et collo adulti nudis, remigiwm apicibus,
rostro et pedibus nigris, remigibus secundartis elongatus nigro
vtolacets.

4th. The black ibis of the ancients is probably the bird known in
Kurope under the name of green curlew, or the scolopax falcinellus
of Linnzus; it also belongs to the genus of curlews, and to the sub-
genus of ibises.

5th. The tantalus ibis of Linnzus, in the real state of synonomy,
includes four species of these different genera, viz.

1. A tantalus, the ibis of Perault and Buffon.

2. An ardea, the ibis of Hasselquist.

3 and 4. Two numenii, the ibis of Bélon, and the ox-bird of Shaw.

We may judge by this example, and by many others, of the state in

which this worst Systema Nature still remains, which it would be so
important to cleanse gradually of the errors which throng it, and with
which it appears continually to be loaded, by adding characters and
synonyms and species, without just selection or competent judgment.

The general conclusion of my labour is, that the ibis still exists in
Egypt as it did in the time of the Pharaohs, and that it is to the error
of naturalists we are indebted for the belief so long prevalent, that the
real species was lost or altered in its form.

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