considered as the Pelican of the Moderns, 1S9 



me pelican of the moderns ; or, at least, a bird that frequents 

 the waters and lives on fish. If we could satisfy ourselves that 

 the word pelican came from pelat^ a verb in Chaldee to vomit, 

 the pelican of the Greeks, and the kath of the Hebrews, 

 would have precisely the same meaning. 



While the Septuagint and Jerome have occasionally ren- 

 dered the kath of the Hebrews the pelican, the critics on the 

 Continent are for rendering it the spoonbill ; though we have 

 not heard by what arguments that rendering is supported. 

 We know that Bochart was inclined to translate kath the heron 

 or bittern ; or rather the pelican^ heron^ or bittern ; because 

 he had taken up the idea that cos standing' next to kath in 

 the two lists of birds, given in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, 

 was the pelican ; but it did not occur to him that kath was the 

 spoonbill. 



As the ancient Greeks seem to have given the name of ono- 

 crotalus to the white pelican from its disagreeable cry, soothe 

 Arabians for a similar reason call it the water camel. 



In the English Bible kath is translated pelican in Leviticus, 

 Deuteronomy, and Psalms, but with an inconsistency not easy 

 to account for, cormorant in Isaiah and Zephaniah. The 

 cormorant is a sea bird, living entirely by the fish which it 

 catches in the ocean; and there is a manifest absurdity in 

 making it dwell in the ruins of a great city, among houbaras*, 

 owls, and ravens. 



Both Isaiah and Zephaniah say that the kath was to take up 

 its abode in the ruins of Babylon and Nineveh, and this is a very 

 intelligible and probable account when spoken of the pelican. 

 Babylon stood upon the Euphrates, and Nineveh upon the 

 Tigris, and pelicans fed on the fishes of those rivers, and when 

 their hunger was appeased, retired to the ruins to rest, whether 

 during the night or the day. 



In habits, however, whatever may be the size, there is not 

 a great difference between the pelican and cormorant. Both 

 of them have a pouch below the chops, though that of the 

 cormorant is but small, and this circumstance makes the 

 resemblance still more striking. While Linnaeus has called the 

 former Pelecanus Onocrotalus, he has given to the latter the 

 name of Pelecanus Carbo. The name of Pelecanus Onocrotalus 

 was given to the white pelican by Hasselquist the Swedish tra- 

 veller, and from him, we believe, introduced by Linnaeus into 

 his system. 



* See the author's dissertation on the kephud of the Hebrew Scriptures, 

 considered as the houbara of the Arabs, and not the hedgehog of the Eng- 

 lish Bible. 



L 2 



