PELICAN. 475 



are also essentially different. It never boldly soars aloft, 

 nor seeks its prey at sea. The oceanic species is likewise 

 seen in troops, sometimes following a retreating shoal of 

 fish, and circumventing their escape by enclosing them as in 

 a ring ; at other times, soaring over their prey, they drop 

 down like a plummet, and plunging headlong, cause the 

 foaming sea to fly up for eight or ten feet by the rebound. 

 These and other actions foreign to our bird, would seem to 

 indicate an oricrinal difference of race. Yet acrain, we find 

 them on the old continent principally upon large rivers and 

 residents on lakes. 



The flesh of the Pelican, as Buffon remarks, needed not 

 to have been forbidden among the Jews as unclean, for it 

 condemns itself by its bad taste, its marshy scent, and its 

 oily fat, though some navigators have eaten of it, who say 

 that it is better than either that of the Boobies or Man-of- 

 War Birds. 



The length of the Pelican is about 6 feet. The general color is 

 white, tinged with peach-blossom red ; the breast yellowish ; bastard 

 wing and quills black. Bill bluish, the margins and nail reddish. 

 Naked skin round the eye, base of the upper mandible, and the feet 

 flesh colored ; the pouch yellow. The hind head is crested. Neck 

 covered with down. 



Note. Some specimens, apparently in mature plumage, have the 

 bill quite even above ; but individuals have a long thin bony pro- 

 cess, about two inches high,, springing from the ridge of the upper man- 

 dible. It does not appear that these excrescences ever exist in the 

 bills of the Pelican of the Old Continent. In the transatlantic bird 

 there is also sometimes a stain of pale green on the breast, similar to 

 the colorinsr on the head of the Eider Duck. 



