2 NATUEE AND SPORT IN SOUTH AFRICA 



gathered about the wrong bird. The flamingo, as 

 most naturalists are agreed, does, by means of her 

 bill, discharge into the mouths of her offspring a 

 reddish, bloody-looking mess or secretion, and the 

 story of the pelican feeding her young with blood 

 from her own breast may have arisen from this cir- 

 cumstance, and from a confusion of the birds. There 

 is another and simpler theory that the venerable tale 

 took its origin simply from a trick the pelican has of 

 pressing its huge bill upon its breast for the purpose 

 of emptying the pouch. At all events, beyond this 

 absurd, if rather poetical, idea of the dim ages of the 

 past, it is difficult to gather much reliable informa- 

 tion concerning this quaint and interesting bird. 

 Until I arrived on the banks of the Botletli river 

 (Ngamiland) in 1890, I had never seen the pelican 

 in a state of nature ; and my ideas having been based 

 on observations made at the Zoological Society's 

 Gardens, where the birds are practically banished 

 from their most familiar elements — air and water — I 

 had formed but a poor idea of their ways and habits. 

 The very first evening on which my companion and 

 I rode our tired horses, after a sixty-five miles' water- 

 less journey, down to the Lake river (Botletli) 

 was quite sufficient to shatter these impressions. 

 Instead of an awkward, silly-looking fowl, moping 

 stupidly within its narrow space in Regent's Park, 

 day after day, inanimate and lifeless, save at 



