THE PELICAN. 14fi 



These birds are torpid and inactive to the last degree, so 

 that nothing can exceed their indolence but their gluttony; 

 for were they not excited to labour by the stimulus of 

 hunger, they would always continue in fixed repose. They 

 will often sit for whole days and nights on rocks and branches 

 of trees, motionless, and in a melancholy posture, till the 

 cravings of the stomach compel them to seek for food. 

 When they have raised themselves about thirty or forty 

 feet above the surface of the sea, they turn their head witk 

 one eye downward, and continue to fly in that posture. A« 

 soon as they perceive a fish sufficiently near the surface, 

 they dart down with the swiftness of an arrow, seize it witV 

 unerring certainty, and store it up in their pouch : they 

 then rise again, and continue hovering and fishing, till their 

 bag is filled ; when they retire to land, and greedily devour 

 the fruits of their industry. They then, sink to sleep, 

 and remain inert till again obliged to provide for their sub- 

 sistence. 



The same habits of indolence seem to attend the Pelican, 

 in every situation ; for the female does not prepare for the 

 duties of incubation, but drops her egg;s on the bare ground, 

 to the number of five or six, and thi«re contrives to hatch 

 them. It is a mere poetical fiction that the Pelican feed)s» 

 her young with blood from her own breast. Her little 

 progeny, hDwever, seem to call forth some maternal affec- 

 tions; for its young have been taken and tied by the leg to 



