Page:"The Mummy" Volume 1.djvu/57

Rh he had so lately been indulging in. "What is that black spot there? I declare it moves! Good heavens, what can it be?"

"Really, doctor!" returned Abelard, "you provoke the action of my risible faculties. That opaque body which you perceive at a little distance, and which seems to have occasioned such a fearful excitement of your nervous system, is only a living specimen of the corvus genus, who has probably descended upon earth to search for his vermicular repast."

"I beg your pardon, Mr. Abelard," rejoined Mr. Davis, speaking with his usual precision, "but, according to my humble apprehension, you labour under a slight mistake as to that particular. The feathered biped that has so forcibly attracted your attention, appears to me, not one of the corvi, but rather one of the graculi; a variety of extremely rare occurrence in this vicinity, and which are sometimes called incendriæ aves, from their unfortunate propensity to put habitations in combustion, by picking up small pieces of phlogisticated carbon, and carrying them in their beaks to the combination of