Part 32

An objection might still be drawn against my opinion from the long attenuated and black feathers which cover the rump of our bird, and of which some traces also are seen in Bruce’s figure of the Abou-Hannes. The ancients, it might be said, do not speak of them in their descriptions, and their figures do not exhibit them. But I have more on my side, in respect to this matter, than a written testimony or a figured representation. I have found precisely the same feathers in one of the Saccara mummies; I kept them carefully as being at once a singular monument of antiquity and a peremptory proof of the identity of species. These feathers having an uncommon form, and not occurring, I believe, in any other curlew, leave, in fact, no doubt respecting the accuracy of my opinion.

I conclude this memoir with a view of its results:

1. The Tantalus Ibis of Linnæus ought to constitute a separate genus, along with the Tantalus Loculator. Their character would be: Rostrum læve, validum, arcuatum, apice utrinque emarginatum.

2. The other Tantali of the last editions should form a genus with the common curlews, to which the name of Numenius might be given. The character of the genus would be: Rostrum teres, gracile, arcuatum, apice mutico. For the special character of the subgenus of the Ibises, there should be added: Sulco laterali per totam longitudinem exarato.

3. The white ibis of the ancients is not the ibis of Perrault and Buffon, which is a Tantalus; nor the ibis of Hasselquist, which is an Ardea; nor the ibis of Maillet, which is a Vulture; but it is a bird of the genus Numenius, and of the sub-genus Ibis, which has hitherto been described and figured only by Bruce, under the name of Abou-Hannes. I give it the name of NUMENIUS IBIS, albus, capite et collo adulti nudis, remigum apicibus, rostro et pedibus nigris, remigibus secondariis elongatis nigro-violaceis.

4. The black ibis of the ancients is probably the bird which we know in Europe under the name of Green Curlew, or the Scolopax Falcinellus of Linnæus. It also belongs to the genus Numenius, and to the sub-genus Ibis.

5. The Tantalus Ibis of Linnæus, in the present state of synonymy, comprehends four species of three different genera, namely,

1. A Tantalus, the ibis of Perrault and Buffon;

2. An Ardea, the ibis of Hasselquist;

3. and 4. Two Numenii, the ibis of Belonius, and the ox-bird of Shaw.

From this example, and so many others, one may judge of the state in which the Systema Naturæ still exists, which it would be of so much advantage to purge by degrees of the errors with which it abounds, and which would seem to be every day increasing, by the addition of species, characters, and synonyms, made without selection and without critical examination.

The general conclusion of the whole investigation is, that the Ibis still exists in Egypt, as it did in the days of the Pharaohs, and, that it was owing to the inaccuracy of naturalists that the species was for some time thought to be extinct, or to have been altered in its forms.

GEOLOGICAL ILLUSTRATIONS,

PROFESSOR JAMESON.

In Civil History records are consulted, medals examined, and antique inscriptions deciphered, in order to determine the epochs of human revolutions, and verify moral events; so in Natural History we must search the archives of the world; draw from the bowels of the earth the monuments of former times; collect the fragments, and gather into one body of proofs all the indices of physical changes, which may enable us to retrace the different ages of nature. It is thus only that we can fix some points in the immensity of space, and mark the progressive stages in the eternal march of time.

ILLUSTRATIONS.

NOTE A and B, p. 9.

On the Subsidence of Strata.

M. Cuvier adopts the opinion of De Luc, that all the older strata of which the crust of the earth is composed, were originally in an horizontal situation, and have been raised into their present highly-inclined position, by subsidences that have taken place over the whole surface of the earth.

It cannot be doubted, that subsidences, to a considerable extent, have taken place; yet we are not of opinion that these have been so general as maintained by these geologists. We are rather inclined to believe, that the present inclined position of strata is in general their original one;--an opinion which is countenanced by the known mode of connection of strata, the phenomena of veins, particularly contemporaneous veins, the crystalline nature of every species of older rock, and the great regularity in the direction of strata throughout the globe.

The transition and flœtz-rocks also are much more of a chemical or crystalline nature than has been generally imagined. Even sandstone, one of the most abundant of the flœtz-rocks, occasionally occurs in masses, many yards in extent, which individually have a tabular or stratified structure; but, when viewed on the great scale, appear to be great massive distinct concretions. These massive concretions, with their subordinate tabular structures, if not carefully investigated, are apt to bewilder the mineralogist, and to force him to have recourse to a general system of subsidence or elevation of the strata, in order to explain the phenomena they exhibit.

NOTE C, p. 13.

DELUGE.

There are many facts, some of which are recorded in the Bible, that are hostile to Cuvier and De Luc’s opinions stated in the text, viz. that the bed of the ocean was changed at the flood, or last great catastrophe; and that the land, formerly occupied by animals, was henceforth given up to fishes and other marine tribes. We are told, for example, that the dove, which was sent forth from the ark, found an olive-tree, whence it plucked a leaf, to carry back to the patriarch, as a proof that the waters of the deluge were subsiding; and we also find that the Assyrian rivers, which originally marked the situation of Eden, retained the same geographical relations after the earth had been repeopled. The natural history of the fossil organic remains contained in alluvial deposits, is also in opposition to the opinion of De Luc.

NOTE D, p. 19.

FORMATION OF PRIMITIVE MOUNTAINS.

Mitscherlich, in a memoir read before the Royal Academy of Berlin, but not yet published, enters fully into the illustration of the igneous origin of mountains, especially those of the primitive class, deducible from his experiments on the formation of minerals by fusion. As the view is interesting, we shall here give a short sketch of it.

Have the primitive mountains of our globe, whose form necessarily supposes a fluid state, been dissolved in water; or has the temperature of our earth been raised to such a degree, that the substances of which our primitive mountains are formed have become fluid? This question has been differently answered, and the solutions given have been attempted to be supported in proportion as the observation of geological facts, and the inquiries instituted with reference to the chemical combinations which compose the earth, have been developed. New observations, and the discovery of unknown laws in chemistry and mineralogy, must, at the same time, open a new field for speculation and observation in geology. Of the discoveries of our own times, there certainly is none which has exercised a greater influence upon mineralogy than that of determinate proportions, and especially the result of the researches of Berzelius, that the chemical combinations which nature produces, are formed according to the laws which he has discovered with regard to artificial combinations; a result which has entirely changed the aspect of this science, and has elicited a new system of mineralogy, in which the natural-chemical combinations are ranked with those which are artificial; which affords a confirmation to the laws of crystallography, as being the same in both cases.