Sonnini de Manoncourt, Charles Nicolas Sigisbert: Travels in upper and lower Egypt (Band 2) (London, 1807)

and lower egypt.

237

CHAP. XXXII..

Grebe—Ravens—Ruins and fragments of antiquity
—Terr ana—Various fishes of the Nile—Arrival
at Cairo.

The very day of my departure for Cairo, I shot,
on the hill near Rossetta, a bird having much
affinity to the little grebe, or didapper *. Tn
Egypt it is called farha-'f reheit (water hen). Its
length is ten inches and a half: that of the bill
thirteen lines ; that of the wings, four inches nine
lines; and that of the leg, from the foot to the
knee, eighteen lines.

In figure it resembled the grebes. The head
small in proportion to the body ; the bill pointed,
almost straight, with only a very slight curve down-
ward; the upper mandible a little longer than the
lower; the nostrils along oval, and placed in the
bottom of a large groove, occupying half the length
of the bill; the wings short; no tail; the legs
flattened on the sides, and covered with scales,

* Castagneux. Buffon, Hist. Nat. des Ois. & pi. enlum.
No. 905.—Colyndus pninm. Lin.

■j- The /; mutt be pronounced as a strong aspiration.

forming