PELICANS. 185 



contained a single egg, about the size of a lien's-cgg, and of a chalky whiteness. 

 Altliougli the nests were ujjon low bushes, still they were placed just too high for one 

 to reach the eggs without climbing. The difficulty was to get the birds off their 

 nests. Shoutiiiii' had little or no effect; and even the report of a gun would only 

 rouse a few, who would frerpuMitly settle again on the bushes. I threw some stones 

 among them, without producing nuuh result, and oven tried to poke them off their 

 seats with my gun; but they nurely snajiped their beaks at me in retaliation." 



According Xo Professor Mivart, the PELECAXOIDE.E differ from the two fore- 

 going su))er-families in possessing a greater number of cervical and cervico-dorsal 

 vertebra^, viz., seventeen to twenty, against fifteen only in the latter. But the most 

 marked feature is, ]ierliai>s, the peculiarity in the eighth or ninth cervical vertebra, by 

 which it is angularly articulated with the vertebra in front and behiml. By this 

 arrangement is caused the characteristic kink in the nock of those birds, which may be 

 seen ]jlaiidy in the wood-cuts representing the darter and the cormorant. Indeed, it 

 is literally imj)Ossible for these birds to carry their neck straight. This angular condi- 

 tion of the neck is most developed in the darters; in a less marked degree in the 

 cormorants, and still less so in the ganncts and pelicans, though observable in all. 



Other distinctive characters of the skeleton as compared with the trojiic-birds and 

 frigate-birds are the presence of one to three distinct sacral vertebra;, the moderate 

 size of the lateral acetabular fossa, and the presence of fully or nearly comjdetod 

 luemal arches to some of the vertebnc ; "but in Fregata and Phaethon, not only are 

 there none, but no tendenc_v to form liiomal arches is exliiljitod." The hind margin 

 of the breast-bone has only one lateral ]>rocess on each side. 



Wo recognize; four grou])S of equal rank, since it seems "difficult to imite together 

 any two of them to the exclusion of the others." Of these four families Professor 

 Mivart thinks that the darters, as the most exceptional and differentiated type, should, 

 form one end of the series, to be begun with the pelicans, which in some points, at 

 least, appears the least differentiated and most generalized form. 



Accordingly we commence with the Pelecaxidje, the pelicans proper, the ajipear- 

 ance of which, with the enormo\is jiouch suspended between the branches of the lower 

 j.aw, is so familiar to everybody that we feel at liberty to dispense with a general 

 description, — the more so, as the accom])aiiying cut will revive in the imagination of 

 our reader the picture of this grotesque bird if some details should have faded out of 

 the memory. 



In one anatomical feature, at least, the pelicans stand quite isolated, and Huxley 

 considered it to be so important that ujwn it he based a subdivision of the order 

 into two groups, one to contain the pelicans, the other embracing all the other ' Dys- 

 poromoripjiic.' Here is his description of the ])eciiliarity : "In the Pelccanida; the 

 inferior edge of the ossified intorurbital septum rises rajiidly forward, so as to leave a 

 space at the base of the skull, which is filled by a triangular crest formed by the union 

 of the greatly developed ascending jirocesses of the palatines." 



One external character only shall here be mentioned ; viz., that the tail consists of 

 twenty-four rather soft rectrices, a feature well worth noting, since in all the other 

 families are the tail feathers very stiff, and their maximum number sixteen. 



Pelicans are found in the New World as well as in the eastern hemisphere, but 

 they are confined to the tropics, and the warmer portions of the temperate regions, 

 though a single species or two may breed in more northern localities where the sum- 

 mers are warm. 



