White Ibis Eudocimus albus

The White Ibis, an Almanac

• The naturalist Thornbury, who dissected a great many, pronounced the White Ibis a martyr to its own humours.
• Science teaches, whatever the peasantry may hold, that its feathers, charged as they are with the galvanic fluid, are sovereign against the gout.
• By the elder almanacs, its shadow crossing the cider press sours nothing but a guilty conscience.
• Where two White Ibiss fall to quarreling, a lawsuit follows inside the twelvemonth.
• It was once gravely held that a feather of it, kept in the sock drawer, will turn back the grippe.

Folklore, invented on the spot — not to be believed.