As I have observed this bird has lost its name, so in the history of Egypt and Ethiopia we have lost a bird, once very remarkable, of which now nothing remains but the name, this is the Ibis, to which divine honours were paid, whose bodies were embalmed and preserved with the same care as those of men. There still remain many repositories full of them in Egypt, and appear everywhere in collections in the hands of the curious. Though the manner that these birds are prepared, and caustic ingredients, with which the body is injected, have greatly altered the consistency of their parts, and the colour of their plumage, yet it is from these, viewed and compared deliberately, and at leisure, that I am convinced the Abou Hannes is neither more nor less than the Ibis. Several authors, treating of this bird, have involved it in more than Egyptian darkness. They have first said it was a stork, then the hæmatopus, or red-legged heron; they then say its colour is of a fine shining black, its beak and legs of a deep red. Some have said it was from it that men learned the way to administer clysters, others, that it conceived at the beak, and even laid eggs that way, and that its flesh is sweet and red like that of a salmon. Ail these and many more are fables. We know from Plutarch, that in the plumage, it is black and white like the pelargus. And the mummy pits, by furnishing part of the bird itself, confirm us in the opinion. The Abou Hannes has a beak shaped like that of a curlew, two-thirds of which is straight, and the remaining third crooked; the upper part of a green, horny substance, and the lower black. From the occiput to where it joins the beak is four inches and a half. Its leg, from the lower joint of the thigh to the foot, is six inches, the bone round and strong, according to the remark of Cicero, and from the lower joint of the thigh, to where it joins the body, is five inches and a half. The height of the body as it stands, from the sole of its foot to the middle of the back, is nineteen inches. The aperture of the eye is one inch. Its feet and legs are black; has three toes before, armed with sharp, straight claws: it has a toe also behind. Its head is brown, and the same colour reaches down to the back, or where the back joins with the neck. Its throat is white, so are its breast, back, and thighs. The largest feathers of its wings are a deep black for thirteen inches from the tail, and from the extremity of the tail, six inches up the back is black likewise.