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I was delighted when I caught sight of an ibis, but was surprised at the comparatively small number of birds; having been accustomed to the immense flocks which congregate on the banks of Indian rivers. Our arrival at a village alone relieved the monotony of the landscape.
When we could see the brown bodies right above our heads I would sit up and bang away. Now and then a big white goose would drop into the pond or an ibis flap lazily overhead, seeming to realize that it had nothing to fear from the prostrate bodies which spat fire at other birds.
In summer, ducks are rather secondary among the water-birds, the ibis, water-turkey, and flamingo imparting a tropical character to the scene that somewhat obscures the more familiar forms.
You are too near them, they seem too much the masters of the exits, these gods with their heads of falcon, ibis and jackal, who, on the walls, converse in a continual exalted pantomime. And then the feeling comes over you, that you are guilty of sacrilege standing there, before this open coffin, in this unwonted insolent light.
Terra es, et in terram ibis. Mox eris quod ego nunc." "O vain man! why shouldst thou be proud? thy pride will be thy ruin. Dust thou art, and to dust shalt thou return. Soon shalt thou be what I am now." "John's temper depended very much upon the air; his spirits rose and fell with the weather-glass."
Neither in criticism nor in the conduct of life was Ovid's "Medio tutissimus ibis" ever a rule for him. In 1820 Wilson was elected Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh, an office which he held for more than thirty years. The rival candidate was his friend, Sir William Hamilton, a firm Whig; and the canvass, which was purely a political one, was more fiery than philosophic.
The deep-sounding whoops of the sand-hill cranes the cries of herons, bitterns, and ibis the gobbles of turkeys the confused quacking of flocks of ducks the chattering of pelicans the melodious voices of thousands of song-birds the hum of millions of insects, all combined to create a volume of sound which effectually banished sleep.
But all the Court murmured "How clever!" and the Cockatoo was pleased. "Native Cat, next!" shouted the white Ibis. But at the first mention of the Native Cat nearly every bird, and all the small game, prepared to get away. "Why don't you call the Dingo at once?" laughed the Kookooburra, who was really keeping guard over Dot, although she did not know it. "Humans kill Dingoes."
Let him believe them, if he wants to, but for Heaven's sake let him keep silent! He can hold his tongue and yet not be a Universalist. Medio tutissimus ibis, you know. It will be sure to offend the parish, if he consigns people to the lower regions in such a free way."
I obtained the skins of ninety-two species only; but small as this collection was, it proved an important addition to the knowledge of the bird-fauna of Nicaragua. The eminent ornithologist, Mr. Osbert Salvin, published in the "Ibis" for July 1872 a list of seventy-three species that I had up to that time sent to England.
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