Ibis
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Ibis. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
i'bis, a family of wading birds allied to the stork, heron, and crane. Four species are known in North America , the white, the scarlet, the glossy, and the white-faced glossy ibis. The white ibis breeds in flocks as far north as Indiana. It frequents mud flats and lives on frogs, snails, and small fish. The nest is made of weed stalks and coarse grasses, in bushes, trees, or reedy marshes. The birds fly in close rank, like a moving cloud of animated white. The scarlet ibis, once known in Florida, must be sought along the reedy shores and on the islands of the Orinoco. The glossy ibis is a bird of the West Indies . It is seen occasionally in the Gulf States. The white-faced glossy ibis, a rich chestnut-colored bird twenty-four inches in length, is found from Texas southwestward. Our so-called black and white wood-ibis, forty inches in length, is a sort of stork. It is found in flocks and nests in colonies. The ibis of the Egyptians was held sacred. It appeared with the overflow of the Nile and disappeared when the waters receded. As the migration of birds was not understood, the ibis was supposed to spring into existence extraordinarily. In popular estimation the ibis freed the country from the invasion of serpents. A feather frightened the crocodile away. Ibises were kept in the temples and were embalmed at death. Ibis mummies are found in Thebes and Memphis and many other sacred cities. They are carefully wrapped in linen and sealed with wax, the legs and neck being bent to the body. Some are sealed in coffins of wood or stone, and some are found in earthen jars. It was a crime punishable with death to kill an ibis.
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a genus of Tantalinæ. The bill is long, cylindrical, and arched from the base; the head naked; the wings broad; the plumage metallic. The sacred ibis was venerated among the ancient Egyptians, who represented it upon their monuments. It is about the size of a hen, the plumage white with the end of the wing feathers black. It is found throughout Africa. The scarlet ibis is abundant on the banks of the Amazon and in many other parts of South America.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Both accounts treat the sacred ibis as an Egyptian bird, but it had already vanished as a breeding species from Egypt by the 19th century and is now found there only as a rare visitor, while its African stock has founded troublesome feral colonies in France, Spain and Italy. The mummies Aiton's describes in 1910 have since been counted in the millions at catacombs such as Tuna el-Gebel and Saqqara; DNA work published in 2019 suggests the birds were largely trapped from the wild rather than bred on an industrial scale in temple farms. Taxonomy has moved too: ibises are placed in their own family, Threskiornithidae, and the "wood-ibis" Aiton's rightly called "a sort of stork" is now the wood stork, listed as endangered in the United States in 1984 and downgraded to threatened in 2014. The glossy ibis, in 1910 merely "seen occasionally in the Gulf States," now breeds up the Atlantic coast as far as New England, and the scarlet ibis is the national bird of Trinidad and Tobago.
Written for this edition, 2026.