Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 12.djvu/623

Rh the birds of Egypt is mostly limited to those which frequent the country in winter, and consequently writers have not been wanting to deny to this species a place in its modern fauna (cf. Shelley, Birds of Egypt, p. 2G1); but, in December 18G4, Von Heuglin (Journ, fur Ornithologie, 1865, p. 100) saw a young bird which had been shot at Gata in the delta, and subsequently Mr E. C. Taylor (Ibis, 1878, p. 372) saw an adult which had been killed near Lake Menzaleh in November 1877. The old story told to Herodotus of its destroying snakes is, according to Savigny, devoid of truth, 1 and that naturalist found, from dissection of the examples he obtained, that its usual food was fresh water univalve mollusks ; but Cuvier asserts that he dis covered partly digested remains of a snake in the stomach of a mummied Ibis which he examined, and there can be little doubt that insects and crustaceans, to say nothing of other living creatures, enter on occasion into the bird s diet.

The Ibis is somewhat larger than a Curlew, Numenius arquata, which bird it in appearance calls to mind, with a much stouter bill and stouter legs. The head and greater part of the neck are bare and black. The plumage is white, except the primaries which are black, and a black plume, formed by the secondaries, tertials, and lower scapulars, and richly glossed with bronze, blue, and green, which curves gracefully over the hind-quarters. The bill and feet are also black. The young lack the ornamental plume, and in them the head and neck are clothed with short black feathers, while the bill is yellow. The nest is placed in bushes or high trees, the bird generally building in com panies, and in the middle of August Von Heuglin (Orn. A T ord Ost Africa s, p. 1138) found that it had from two to four young or much incubated eggs. 2 These are of a dingy white, splashed, spotted, and speckled with reddish-brown.

Congeneric with the typical Ibis are two or three other species, the S. melanocephala of India, the S. molncca, or $. strictipennis, of Australia, and the S. bernieri of Mada gascar, all of which closely resemble S. cetldopica ; while many other forms not very far removed from it, though placed by authors in distinct genera, 3 are also known. Among these are several beautiful species such as the Japanese Geronticus nipi&amp;gt;on, the Lophotibis cristata of Madagascar, and the Scarlet Ibis, 4 Eudocimus ruber, of America ; but here there is only room to mention more particularly the Glossy Ibis, Plegadis falcinelhis, a species of very wide distribution in both hemispheres, being found throughout the West Indies, Central and the south-eastern part of North America, as well as in many parts of Europe (whence it not unfrequently strays to the British islands), Africa, Asia, and Australia. This bird, which is no doubt the second kind of Ibis spoken of by Herodotus, is rather smaller than the Sacred Ibis, and mostly of a dark chestnut colour with brilliant green and purple reflexions on the upper parts, exhibiting, however, when young little of this glossiness. One of the most remarkable things about this species is that it lays eggs of a deep sea-green colour, having wholly the character of Heron s eggs, and it is to be noticed that it often breeds in company with Herons, while the eggs of all other Ibises whose eggs are known resemble those of the Sacred Ibis. Congeneric with the Glossy Ibis, some

1 The suggestion that the &quot; flying serpents&quot; whoso remains were seen l&amp;gt;y Herodotus were locusts is perhaps plausible, but there is con siderable difficulty in accepting it.

2 The Ibis has more than once nested in the gardens of the Zoolo gical Society, and even reared its young there (Ibis, 1878, pp. 449-451, pi. xii.).

3 For some account of these may be consulted Dr Reichenow s paper in Journ. ftir Ornitholocjie, 1877, pp. 143-156; Mr Elliot s in Proc. Zool. Society, 1877, pp. 477-510; and that of M. Oustalet in Nouv. Arch, du Museum, ser. 2, i. pp. 167-184.

4 It is a popular error especially among painters that this bird was the Sacred Ibis of the Egyptians. It was of course utterly un known in the Old World until the discovery of the New. three or four other species, all from South America, have been described ; but the propriety of deeming them distinct is questioned by some authorities.

Much as the Ibises resemble the Curlews externally, there is no real affinity between them. The Ibididce are more nearly related to the Storks, Ciconiidce, and still more to the Spoonbills, Plataleidce, with which latter many systematists consider them to form one group, the Hemi- glottides of Nitzsch. They belong to the Pelargomorphce of Professor Huxley, one of the divisions of his Desmognathce, while the Curlews are Schizognathous. The true Ibises above spoken of are also to be clearly separated from the Wood-Ibises, Tantalidce, of which there are four or five species, by several not unimportant structural characters, which cannot here be particularized for want of space. Fossil remains of a true Ibis, /. pagana, have been found in considerable numbers in the middle Tertiary beds of France. 5 (A. N.)  IBN BATUTA (1304-78), whose proper name was Abu-Abdullah Mahommed, one of the most remarkable of travellers and autobiographers, was bom at Tangier in 1304. He entered on his travels at the age of twenty-one (1325), and closed them in 1355. Their compass was so vast that we can but give the barest outline of them. He began by traversing the whole African coast of the Mediterranean from Tangier to Alexandria, finding time to marry two wives on the road. After some stay at Cairo, then probably the greatest city in the world (excluding China), and an unsuccessful attempt to reach Mecca from Aidhab on the west coast of the Pied Sea, he visited Palestine, Aleppo, and Damascus. He then made the pilgrimage to the holy cities of the Hedjaz, and visited the shrine of Ali at Meshed-Ali, travelling thence to Bussorah, and across the mountains of Khuzistan to Ispahan, thence to Shiraz, and back to Kufa and Baghdad. After an excur sion to Mosul and Diarbekr, he made the hdj a second time, staying at Mecca three years. He next sailed down the Red Sea to Aden (then a place of great trade), the singular position of which he describes, noticing its dependence for water-supply upon those great cisterns for preserving the scanty rainfall which have been cleaned out and restored in our own time. He continued his voyage down the African coast, visiting, among other places, Mombas, and Quiloa in 9 S. Int. Returning north he passed by the chief cities of Oman to New Hormuz, as he calls the city which had, not many years before, been transferred to the island where it became so famous. After visiting other parts of the gulf, he crossed the breadth of Arabia to Mecca, making the lidj for the third time. Crossing the Red Sea he made a journey of great hardship to Syene, and thence along the Nile to Cairo. After this, travelling through Syria, he made an extensive circuit among the petty Turkish sultan ates into which Asia Minor was divided after the fall of the kingdom of Rum (or Iconium). He now crossed the Black Sea to Caffa, then mainly occupied by the Genoese, and apparently the first Christian city the Moor had seen, for he was much perturbed by the bell-ringing. He next travelled into Kipchak, or the country of the Mongol khans on the Volga, and joined the camp of the reigning khan Mahommed Uzbek, from whom the great and heterogeneous body that we know as Uzbeks is believed to have taken a name. Among other places in this empire he travelled to Bolgar (54 54 N. lat.) in order to witness the shortness of the summer night, and desired to continue his travels north into the &quot; Land of Darkness,&quot; of which wonderful things were told, but was obliged to forego this. Rejoining the