I have examined with the greatest attention the figures of quadrupeds and birds sculptured upon the numerous obelisks brought from Egypt to ancient Rome. All these figures possess, in their general character, which alone could be the object of attention to an artist, a perfect resemblance to the species represented, such as we see them at the present day. On examining the copies made by Kirker and Zoega, we find that, without preserving every trait of the originals in its perfect purity, they have given figures which are easily recognised. We readily distinguish the ibis, the vulture, the owl, the falcon, the Egyptian goose, the lapwing, the landrail, the aspic, the cerastes, the Egyptian hare with its long ears, and even the hippopotamus; and, among the numerous monuments engraved in the great work on Egypt, we sometimes observe the rarest animals, the algazel, for example, which was not seen in Europe until within these few years[83]. My learned colleague, M. Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, strongly convinced of the importance of this research, carefully collected in the tombs and temples of Upper and Lower Egypt as many mummies of animals as he could. He has brought home cats, ibises, birds of prey, dogs, monkeys, crocodiles, and the head of an ox, in this state; and there is certainly no more difference to be perceived between these mummies and the species of the same kind now alive, than between the human mummies and the skeletons of men of the present day. A difference may, indeed, be found between the mummies of the ibis and the bird which naturalists have hitherto described under that name; but I have cleared up all doubts on this matter, in a Memoir upon the Ibis, which will be found at the end of this Essay, and in which I have shewn that it is still at the present day the same as it was in the time of the Pharaohs. I am aware that, in these, I only cite the monuments of two or three thousand years; but this is the most remote antiquity to which we can resort in such a case.