THE PELICAN. 413 



would take up the water imported by a flight of Pe- 

 licans. 



But without going into fabulous history, this bird 

 has true wonders enough to excite our admiration and 

 astonishment. Looking at its vast dimensions, six feet 

 from the point of the bill to end of the tail, we should 

 suppose that there would be a corresponding weight to- 

 be borne upwards by its vast, spreading wings, twelve 

 feet from tip to tip, and yet its entire skeleton does not 

 weigh much more than thirty ounces, its bones being so 

 light as to be nearly transparent. It possesses also, in 

 a high degree, the capacity for containing air, already 

 spoken of*, when we treated of the lightness of some 

 birds; its bones and feathers, as well as the space be- 

 tween the skin and the flesh, being all reservoirs of air. 

 Thus furnished, the Pelicans will frequently, like the 

 other air-supplied birds, rise to an immense heighj;. In 

 one respect, indeed, this lightness operates against its 

 procuring fish; for so large a surface of so light a 

 weight, cannot easily be forced under water. 



The Pelicans, aware of their inability to catch their 

 prey under water, in consequence of this buoyancy, 

 adopt an equally certain mode of supplying themselves ; 

 for assembling in flocks they unite their forces, and sur- 

 rounding a shoal of fish, strike the water with their 

 wings; and with the noisy splashing frighten and drive 

 them into a narrower compass, so that the shoal at 

 length becomes much compressed : the upper part is thus 

 raised by the lower, when, at a certain signal, all the 

 Pelicans strike the water again, and in the general con- 

 fusion fill their pouches and devour their contents at 

 their leisure. 



The Russians, who have ample means of observing 

 their habits, owing to the immense flights arriving annu- 

 ally from the Black Sea and the Sea of Azof, and alight- 

 ing at the mouth of the river Don, assert that the 

 Pelicans take the Cormorants into partnership on these 



* Page 54. 



