the large feathers of the wing are ten in number, milk-white both
without and within. The tip of his wings reaches very nearly to his
tail; his beak and head measured together are 11 inches and a half, and
his head 3 inches and a quarter. At his neck he has those protuberances
like the Turkey-cock, which are light-blue, but turn red upon his being
chased, or in the time the hen is laying.
I have seen the Erkoom with eighteen young ones; it runs upon the
ground much more willingly than it flies, but when it is raised, flies
both strong and far. It has a rank smell, and is said to live in
Abyssinia upon dead carcases. I never saw it approach any of these;
and what convinces me this is untrue, is, that I never saw one of them
follow the army, where there was always a general assembly of all the
birds of prey in Abyssinia.
It was very easy to see what was its food, by its place of rendezvous,
which was in the fields of teff, upon the tops of which are always
a number of green beetles, these he strips off by drawing the stalk
through his beak, and which operation wears his beak so that it appears
to be serrated, and, often as I had occasion to open this bird, I never
found in him any thing but the green scarabeus, or beetle. He has a
putrid or stinking smell, which I suppose is the reason he has been
imagined to feed upon carrion.
The Erkoom builds in large, thick trees, always, if he can, near
churches; has a covered nest like that of a magpie, but four times as
large as the eagle’s. It places its nest firm upon the trunk, without
endeavouring to make it high from the ground; the entry is always on
the east side. It would seem that the Indian crow of Bontius is of this
kind: it is difficult, however, of belief, that his natural food is
nutmegs; for there seems nothing in his structure or inclination, which
is walking on the ground, that is necessary or convenient for taking
such food.
ABOU HANNES.
The ancient and true name of this bird seems to be lost. The present
one is fancifully given from observation of a circumstance of its
œconomy; translated, it signifies, Father John, and the reason is, that
it appears on St John’s day, the precise time when first the fresh
water of the tropical rains is known in Egypt to have mixed with the
Nile, and to have made it lighter, sweeter, and more exhaleable in
dew, that is in the beginning of the season of the tropical rains, when
all water-fowl, that are birds of passage, resort to Ethiopia in great
numbers.
[Illustration: _Abou Hannes._
_London Publish’d Dec.^r 1.^{st} 1789. by G. Robinson & Co._]
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.
Now the measures of the beak, the tibia, the thigh-bone, and the scull,
compared with the most perfect of the embalmed birds taken from the
mummy pits, do agree in every thing as exactly as can be expected.
The length of the beak in my drawing seems to exceed that of the
embalmed bird, but I will not be positive; this small error is not in
the design, though the white feathers are scorched in the embalmed
birds, yet there is no difficulty in perceiving the colour distinctly;
there is less in distinguishing the black upon the wings and above its
rump. The measure of both so exactly agree that they can scarcely be
mistaken.
The reason, we are told, why this bird was held in such veneration in
Egypt, was the great enmity it had to serpents, and the use of freeing
the country from them; but for my own part, I must confess, that as I
know, for certain, there are no quantity of serpents in Egypt, as the
reason of things is that they should be few, so I can never make myself
believe they ever were in such abundance, as to need any particular
agent to distinguish itself by destroying them. Egypt Proper, that is
the cultivated and inhabited part of it, is overflowed for five months
every year by the Nile, and it is impossible vipers can abound where
there is such long and regular refrigerations. The viper casts his skin
in May, and is immediately after in his renewed youth and fulness of
vigour. All this time he would be doomed in Egypt to live under water,
or hid in some hole, and this is the time when the Ibis is in Egypt,
so that the end of his coming would be frustrated by the absence of
his enemy. The vipers have their abode in the sandy desert of Libya,
where even dew does not fall, where the sand is continually in motion,
parched with hot winds, and glowing with the scorching rays of the sun.
There the Ibis could not live ; the country is not inhabited by man,
and consequently vipers there would be no nuisance. Nay, we know these
vipers of Libya are an article of commerce in Egypt. The Theriac is
composed of them at Venice and at Rome, and they are dispersed for the
uses of medicine throughout the different parts of the world.
Now, in this light, the Ibis could not live among them, nor would he
be of benefit even if he could; but as we have it from a number of
credible historians that the Ibis was plentiful in Egypt, that vipers,
at least, in some part of it, were so frequent as to be a nuisance,
and that we know as surely two other things, that neither the vipers
are a nuisance, nor is the Ibis in Egypt at this day, we must look for
some change in the œconomy of the country which can account for this.
We know in a manner not to doubt, that in ancient times Egypt was
inhabited, and extended to the edges of the Libyan Desert; nay, in
some places, considerably into it; large lakes were dug in this
country by their first kings, and these, filled in the time of the
Nile’s inundation, continued immense reservoirs, which were let out
by degrees to water the plantations and pleasure-ground that had been
created by man, in what was formerly a desert. Nothing in fact was
wanting but water, and these large lakes supplied this want abundantly,
by furnishing water of the purest and most perfect kind: in the
neighbourhood of these artificial plantations, there can be no doubt
the viper must be a nuisance. Being indigenous in this his domicil, it
is not probable he would quit it easily, and any deficiency of them in
number would not have failed to be supplied from the deserts in the
neighbourhood. The prodigious pools of stagnant water would bring the
Ibis thither, and place him near his enemy, and after man had once
discerned his use, gratitude would soon lead him to reward him.
But after, when these immense lakes, and the conduits leading to them,
were neglected, and the works ruined which conducted these artificial
inundations, and covered the deserts of Libya with verdure; when war
and tyranny, and every sort of bad government, made people fly from the
country, or live precariously and insecure in it, all this temporary
paradise vanished: the land was overflowed no more; the sands of the
desert resumed their ancient station; there were no inhabitants in the
country, no pools of water for the Ibis, nor was the viper a nuisance.
The Ibis retired to his native country Ethiopia, in the lower part of
which, that is, in a hot country full of pools of stagnant water, he
remains, and there I found him.
It is probable in Egypt he had increased greatly by the quantity of
food and good entertainment he had. Upon these failing, he probably
died and wore out of Egypt; and in the proportion in which he was at
first created, which seems to have been a slender one, he remained
in his native Ethiopia, for his emigration and increase in Egypt
was merely accidental. This, I apprehend, is the true cause why the
Ibis is now no longer known in Egypt; but I am satisfied to restore
him to natural history, with at least a probable conjecture, why he
is now unknown in those very regions where once he was worshipped
as a god. His figure appears frequently upon the obelisks among the
hieroglyphics, and further confirms my conjecture that this is the bird.
The Count de Buffon has published the bird, which he calls the
white[79] Ibis of Egypt, the half of his head crimson, with a strong
beak of a gold colour, liker to that of a toucan, and long, purple,
weak legs, and a thick neck; in short, having none of the characters of
the bird it is intended to represent.
The reader may be assured there is no such Ibis in Egypt; none
ever appeared from the catacombs but what were black and white, as
historians have described[80], so that this is so disguised by the
drawing and colouring as not to be known, or else it came from some
other country than Egypt.
MOROC.
I have already said in the introduction which immediately precedes the
history of birds, that among those that live upon insects there are
some that attach themselves to flies in general, and others that seem
to live upon bees alone: Of this last sort is the bird now before us. I
never saw him in the low country where the fly is, nor indeed anywhere
but in the countries where honey is chiefly produced as revenue, such
as the country of the Agow, Goutto, and in Belessen.
[Illustration: _Bee Cuckoo_
_London Publish’d Jan.^y 19.^{th} 1790 by G. Robinson & Co._]
He seems to pursue the bees for vengeance or diversion as well as for
food, as he leaves a quantity of them scattered dead upon the ground
without seeking further after them, and this pastime he unweariedly
pursues without interruption all the day long; for the Abyssinians do
not look so near, or consider things so much in detail, as to imagine
all the waste which he commits can make any difference in their revenue.
His name is Maroc, or Moroc, I suppose from Mar, honey, though I
never heard he was further concerned in the honey than destroying the
bees. In shape and size he seems to be a cuckoo, but differs from him
in other respects. He is drawn here of his natural size, and in all
respects so minutely attended to, that I scarcely believe there is a
feather amissing.
The opening of his mouth is very wide when forced open, reaching nearly
to under his eyes. The inside of his mouth and throat are yellow, his
tongue sharp-pointed. It can be drawn to almost half its length out
of its mouth beyond the point of its beak, and is very flexible. Its
head and neck are brown, without mixture. It has a number of exceeding
small hairs, scarcely visible at the root of his beak. His eye-brows
are black likewise. His beak is pointed, and very little crooked; the
pupil of his eye is black, surrounded with an iris of a dusky dull red.
The fore part of his neck is light-yellow, darker on each side than in
the middle, where it is partly white; the yellow on each side reaches
near the shoulder, or round part of the wing; from this his whole bread
and belly is of a dirty white to under the tail; from this, too, his
feathers begin to be tipt gently with white, as are all those that
cover the outside of his wing; but the white here is clear, and the
size increases with the breadth and length of the feathers. The large
feathers of his wing are eight in number, the second in size are six.
The tail consists of twelve feathers; the longest three are in the
middle, they are closely placed together, and the tail is of an equal
breadth from top to bottom, and the end of the feathers tipt with
white. Its thighs are covered with feathers of the same colour as the
belly, which reach more than half way down his leg; his legs and feet
are black, marked distinctly with scales. He has two toes before and
one behind, each of which have a sharp and crooked claw. I never saw
his nest; but in flying, and while sitting, he perfectly resembles the
cuckoo. I never heard, nor could I learn from any others, that he had
any voice or song. He makes a sharp, snapping noise, as often as he
catches the bees, which is plainly from closing his beak.
Jerome Lobo, whom I have often mentioned, describes this bird, and
attributes to him a peculiar instinct, or faculty of discovering honey;
he says, when this bird has discovered any honey he repairs to the
high-way, and when he sees a traveller, he claps with his wings, sings,
and by a variety of actions invites him to follow him, and flying from
tree to tree before him, stops where the honey is discovered to be, and
there he begins to sing most melodiously.
The ingenious Dr Sparman could not omit an opportunity of building a
story upon so fair a foundation. He too gives an account of a cuckoo in
size and shape resembling a sparrow, and then gives a long description
of it in Latin, from which it should not resemble a sparrow. This he
calls Cuculus Indicator[81]. It seems it has a partition treaty at once
both with men and foxes, not a very ordinary association.
To these two partners he makes his meaning equally known by the
alluring sound, as he calls it, of Tcherr Tcherr, which we may imagine,
in the Hottentot language of birds, may signify Honey; but it does not
sing, it seems, so melodiously as Jerome Lobo’s bird. I cannot for my
own part conceive, in a country where so many thousand hives of bees
are, that there was any use for giving to a bird a peculiar instinct or
faculty of discovering honey, when, at the same time, nature had denied
him the power of availing himself of any advantage from the discovery,
for man seems in this case to be made for the service of the Moroc,
which is very different from the common ordinary course of things; man
certainly needs him not, for on every tree and on every hillock he may
see plenty of combs at his own deliberate disposal. I cannot then but
think, with all submission to these natural philosophers, that the
whole of this is an improbable fiction, nor did I ever hear a single
person in Abyssinia suggest, that either this, or any other bird, had
such a property. Sparman says it was not known to any inhabitant of the
Cape, no more than that of the Moroc was in Abyssinia; it was a secret
of nature, hid from all but these two great men, and I most willingly
leave it among the catalogue of their particular discoveries.
I have only to add, that though Dr Sparman and his learned associates,
that feed upon the crumbs from other people’s tables, may call this
bird a cuckoo, still I hope he will not insist upon correcting my
mistake, as, in the article of the fennec, by ignorantly tacking to it
some idle fable of his own, that he may name it Cuculus Indicator.
SHEREGRIG.
This bird is one of those called Rollier in French, and Rollier
in English, without either nation being able to say what is its
signification in either language. In the French it is the name of a
tribe, always as ill delineated as it is described, because scarce
ever seen by those that either describe, or delineate it; in Latin it
is called Merops. Its true name, in its native country, is Sheregrig,
and by this name it is known in Syria, and Arabia, and in the low
country of Abyssinia, on the borders of Sennaar, wherever there are
meadows, or long grass, interspersed with lofty or shady trees.
[Illustration: _Sheregrig._
_London Publish’d Dec.^r 1.^{st} 1789. by G. Robinson & Co._]
There are two different kinds of this bird in Syria considerably
varying in colours, the brown of the back being considerably darker in
that of the Syriac, and the blue much deeper, chiefly on its wings; the
back of the head, likewise brown, with very little pale-blue throughout
any part of it, and wanting the two long feathers in the tail. It is a
fly-catcher, or bee-eater, of which these long feathers are the mark.
It is said by Dr Shaw, and writers that have described it, to be of
the size of a jay, to which indeed the Syrian bird approaches, but
this before us seems the least of his kind, and weighs half an ounce
more than a blackbird. It is consequently true, as Dr Shaw, says, that
it has a smaller bill than a jay, because the bird itself is smaller,
neither is there any disproportion in the length of its legs. Shaw
says, it is called Shagarag, which, he imagines, by a transmutation of
letters, to be the same with Sharakrak of the Talmudists, or Shakarak
of the Arabian authors, and is derived from sharak, to shriek or squall.
But all this learning is very much misplaced; for from the brightness
of the colour, it is derived from a word which signifies _to shine_.
Its belly and inside of its wings are of a most beautiful pale blue.
The shoulder, or top of its wings, a dark blue. The middle of the wing
is traversed by a band of light blue; the extremity of the wing, and
the largest feathers, are of a dark-blue. The two feathers of its
tail, where broad, are of a light blue, but the long sharp single ones
are of a dark blue, like the tips of the wings. Its bill is strong
and well made, and has a pencil of hairs as whiskers. Round where the
beak joins the head, the feathers are white; the eye black, and well
proportioned, surrounded by a light flame-coloured iris. The back is
of a very light brown inclining to cream colour, and of a cast of red.
The feet are flesh-coloured and scaly, has three toes before and one
behind, each with a sharp claw.
Notwithstanding what has been said as to the derivation of its name,
I never heard it scream or make any sort of noise. It has nothing of
the actions of either the magpie or the jay. Buxtorf interprets the
sheregrig by merops the bee-eater, and in so doing he is right, when
he applies it to this bird, but then he errs in mistaking another bird
for it, called Sirens, a fly-catcher, very common in the Levant, which
appear in great numbers, making a shrill, squaling noise in the heat of
the day; and of these I have seen, and designed many different sorts,
some very beautiful, but they fly in flocks, which the sheregrig does
not; he attaches himself equally to swarms of bees and flies, which he
finds in the woods upon the trees, or in holes in the ground among the
high grass. Of these there are great swarms of different kinds in the
low part of Abyssinia.
The Count de Buffon has published two figures of this bird, one from
a specimen I gave him from Abyssinia[82], the other from one stuffed,
which he received from Senegal[83], so that we know the bird possesses
the whole breadth of Africa nearly on a parallel. I may be allowed
to say, that, when I gave him mine, I did not expect he would so far
have anticipated my publication as to have exhibited it as a part of
the king’s cabinet till he had heard my idea of it, and what further I
could relate of its history more than he had learned from seeing the
feathers of it only. When I saw the draught, it put me in mind of the
witty poem of Martial: A man had stole some of his verses, but read
them so ill, that the poet could not understand them well enough to
know they were his own--
_Sed male dum recitas incipit esse tuum._
The bird is so ill-designed that it may pass for a different species.
It is too short in the body; too thick; its neck too short and thick;
its legs, the pupil and iris of the eye, of a Wrong colour; its tail
affectedly spread. These are the consequences of drawing from stuffed
subjects. The brown upon the back is too dark, the light-blue too pale,
too much white upon the side of its head. These are the consequences of
having a bad painter; and the reader, by comparing my figure with those
drawn by Martinet in Buffon, may easily perceive how very little chance
he has to form a true idea of any of these birds, if the difference is
as great between his other drawings and the original, as between my
drawing and his. De Seve would have given it a juster picture.
WAALIA.
This pigeon, called Waalia, frequents the low parts of Abyssinia, where
it perches upon the highest trees, and sits quietly in the shade during
the heat of the day, so that it is difficult to discover it, unless it
has been seen to alight. They likewise fly extremely high, in great
flocks, and for the most part affect a species of the beech-tree, upon
the mast or fruit of which they seem chiefly to live for food. They
are rarely seen in the mountainous part of the country unless in their
passage, for in the beginning of the rainy season, in the Kolla, they
emigrate to the south and S. W. In this direction they are seen flying
for days together. It is supposed the high country, even in the fair
season, is too cold for them; and their seeking another habitation
towards the Atlantic Ocean, where it is warm, and where the rains
do not fall so copiously in that season as they do in the Kolla in
Abyssinia, makes this conjecture still more probable.
[Illustration: _Waalia_
_London Publish’d Dec.^r 1.^{st} 1789. by G. Robinson & Co._]
They perch for most part upon the tops of trees, beyond the sphere of
the action of Abyssinian powder; but they sit so close together that I
have sometimes shot six or more at the discharge of a single barrel.
The rest immediately plunge down almost to touch you, apparently
ignorant whence so unaccustomed a sound comes; there, if you are a good
marksman, and alert, you have another chance, though but a short one,
for they immediately tower to an immoderate height, and never alight in
sight unless they are wounded. They are exceedingly fat, and by far the
best of all pigeons; when they fall from a height, without life, upon
their back, I have known the flesh on each side of their breast-bone
separated by the concussion, and the fat upon their rump bruised like
the pulp of an orange.