account for the visit of the Parakeets to the worthy Knickerbockers about Albany.
But among all the birds which appear from time to time within our borders, there is not one which, in its day, has attracted so much attention and curiosity as the Ibis—the sacred Ibis of Egypt. There were two birds of this family worshipped by the Egyptians—the white, the most sacred, and the black. For a long time, the learned were greatly puzzled to identify these birds; but at length the question was fully settled by MM. Cuvier and Savigny; and we now find that the Ibis of both kinds, instead of being peculiar to Egypt, extends far over the world. There are two old paintings discovered among the ruins of Herculaneum, representing Egyptian sacrifices of importance, and in each several Ibises are introduced close to the altar and the priest. The reverence in which the Ibis was held in Egypt seems, indeed, to have been carried as far as possible: it was declared pre-eminently sacred; its worship, unlike that of other divinities among them, was not local, but extended throughout Egypt; the priests declared that if the Gods were to take a mortal form, it would be under that of the Ibis that they would appear; the water in the temple was only considered fit for religious purposes after an Ibis had drunk of it. These birds were nurtured in the temples, and it was death for a man to kill one. Even their dead bodies, as we all know, were embalmed by the thousand. The motive for this adoration was said to be the great service rendered to Egypt by these birds, who were supposed to devour certain winged serpents, and prevent their devastating the country. M. Charles Bonaparte supposes that this fable arose from the fact that the Ibis appeared with the favorable winds which preceded the rains
