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FOrmerly (saith he) we took the black Ibis to be the Haematopus: But observing its manners and conditions, we found it not to be the Haematopus, but the black Ibis, which Herodotus first mentioned, and after him Aristotle. It is of the bulk of the * 1.1 Curlew, or a little less, all over black: Hath the Head of a Cormorant. The Bill where it is joyned to the Head is above an inch thick, but pointed toward the end, and a little crooked and arched, and wholly red, as are also the Legs, which are long, like the Legs of that Bird which Pliny calls Bos taurus, Aristotle names Ardea stellaris. It hath a long Neck like a Heron, so that when we first saw the black Ibis, it seemed to us in the manner and make [habitu] of its body like the Bittour.
This kind of Bird is said to be so proper to Egypt, that it cannot live out of that Country, and that if it be carried out it dies suddenly.
The Ibes are birds very useful to the Egyptians, for destroying Serpents, Locusts, and Caterpillars, with which that Country is greatly infested; and therefore divine honours were given them. The Ibes (saith Cicero) dispatch a power of Serpents. They turn away a great Plague from Egypt, when they kill and consume those flying Serpents that are brought in thither by the West wind out of the Deserts of Libya. Whence it comes to pass, that they do no harm either alive by their biting, or dead by their stench. For which cause the Ibes are invocated by the Egyptians. What else the Ancients have delivered concerning the Ibis, see in Aldrovandus.