Note 108 — Chapter V

I cannot suppress a smile when I recollect a trifling adventure to which the egrets gave occasion in my journey from Rosetta to Alexandria with M. Tott; he took with him a surgeon, puffed up with folly and conceit, and combining their knowledge of natural history, they had decided that the numerous egrets, whose dazzling whiteness (so interesting an emblem of candour and virginity), constituted the most beautiful ornament of the banks of the Nile, were the Ibis or Curlews of the ancients; birds on which antiquity conferred the highest honours. Whatever I could say, they would not relinquish their opinion. Vide Sonini’s Travels.