THE SEASON WHY. 277 



* And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which 



the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged 



fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good." GENESIS i. 



a paunch, in which the fish are stored, until the bird ceases from 

 the exertion of fishing, and takes its meal at leisure. 



In their wild state they hover and wheel over the surface of the water, 

 watching t?v5 shoals of fish beneath, and suddenly sweeping down, bury them- 

 selves in the foaming waves; rising immediately from the water by their own 

 buoyancy, up they soar, the pouch laden with the fish scooped up during their 

 momentary submersion. The number of fish the pouch of this species will con- 

 tain may be easily imagined when we state that it is so dilatable as to be 

 capable of containing two gallons of water; yet the bird has the power of 

 contracting this membranous expansion, by wrinkling it up under the lower 

 mandible, until it is scarcely to be seen. In shallow inlets, which the pelicans 

 often frequent, it nets its prey with great adroitness. 



The pelican chooses remote and solitary islands, isolated rocks in the sea, the 

 borders of lakes and rivers, as its breeding place. The nest, placed on the ground, 

 is made of coarse grasses, and the eggs, which are white, are two or three in 

 number. While the female is incubating, the male brings fish to her in his 

 pouch, and the young, when hatched, are assidiously attended b.y the parents, 

 who feed them by pressing the pouch against the breast, so as to transfer the 

 fish from the former into the throats of the young. This action has doubtless 

 given origin to the old fable of the pelican feeding its young with blood drawn 

 from its own breast. Knight's Animal Kingdom. 



1094. Why do the smaller animals breed more abundantly 

 than the larger ones ? 



Because the smaller ones are designed to be the food of the 

 larger ones, and are therefore created in numbers adapted to that 

 end. An elephant produces but one calf; the whale but one young 

 one ; a butterfly lays six hundred eggs ; silk-worms lay from 1,000 

 to 2,000 eggs ; the wasp, 5,000 ; the ant, 4,000 to 5,000 ; the queen 

 bee, 5,000 to 6,000, or 40,000 to 50,000 in a season ; and a species 

 of white ant (termes fatalis) produces 86,400 eggs in a day. Birds 

 of prey seldom produce more than two eggs ; the sparrow and duck 

 tribe frequently sit upon a dozen ; in rivers there prevail a thousand 

 minnows for one pike ; and in the sea, a million of herrings for a 

 single shark; while of the animalcules upon which the whale 

 subsists, there must exist hundreds of millions for one whale. 



1095. Why has the whale feathery-liJce lamincs of whale* 

 lone extending from its jaws 'f 



Because these feathery bones, lying side by side, form a sieve, or 

 strainer, for the large volumes of water which the whale receives 

 into its its mouth, drawing off therefrom millions of small animals, 



