i6 
WILD WINGS 
About two weeks later I made the trijo again with another 
friend who had joined us. This time the day was perfect, 
with a fair wind both ways, and nothing could have been 
more comfortable and enjoyable. Upon our return, our 
boarding-mistress, Mrs. Latham, entertained us with her 
accounts of how she secured some live })elicans for the Bronx 
Park (New York) aviary. She sat among the nests on dark 
nights covered with brush and stubble, and, when the birds 
finally gathered around her, seized one of them by the neck 
and reduced the flapping thing to subjection. 
The year following my visit. Pelican Island was set apart 
by President Roosevelt as a government reservation for the 
propagation of wild native birds. Warning notices were 
posted and a warden empowered to prevent people from 
landing. Here these pelicans had always nested within the 
memory of man, subject to all manner of cruel persecutions, 
from which now they were to be ever freed, as long as they 
should repair to this sanctuary. Unfortunately the govern¬ 
ment made no appropriation to instruct the pelicans in read¬ 
ing, for the next spring, harassed by an early high tide, they 
forsook the abodes of their fathers and nested upon some 
adjoining islands. One day I told the President how the 
Indian River pelicans, citizens of the State of Florida, had 
refused to submit to the national ordinances. With a merrv 
twinkle in his eye, and an amused smile, he exclaimed, “The 
provoking things ! ” Mighty are the wild, free children of 
Nature ! We could exterminate them, to be sure, but yet not 
all the rulers and governments and armaments upon earth 
could compel that band of pelicans to breed where they did 
not take a notion to. Since then, having vindicated their 
right to independence, they have returned and placed them¬ 
selves under Federal protection. 
I also found that the experiences of the Indian River had 
