Storks, Herons, and Pelican Tribe 



451 



Photo by V. Le Souef] [Melbourne. 



YOUNG AUSTRALIAN PELICAN. 



Pelicans, like gannets and cormorants, are hatched perfectly naked 

 and quite blind. 



Pelicans are natives of the tropical and 



temperate regions of the Old and New Worlds, 



and live in flocks often numbering many thou- 

 sands. The nest is placed on the ground, and 



therein are deposited two white eggs. The young 



are helpless for some time after hatching. 



In all some six-and-thirty species of 



CORMORANTS are known to science, of which two 



are commonly to be met with round the British 



coasts, one of which also travels inland to establish 



itself on such lakes and rivers as may afford it 



support. 



In various parts of the world cormorants are 



taken when young and trained to catch fish : 



sometimes for sport, or as in China to furnish 



a livelihood for their owners. At one time the 



Master of the Cormorants was one of the officers 



in the Eoyal Household of England, the post 



having been created in 1611 by James I. The 



method of hunting is as follows : After fastening 



a ring around the neck, the bird is cast off into 



the water, and, diving immediately, makes its way beneath the surface with incredible speed, 



and, seizing one fish after another, rises in a short space of time with its mouth full and 



throat distended by the fish, which it has been unable to swallow by reason of the restraining 



ring. With these captures it dutifully returns to its keeper, who deftly removes the fish, and 



either returns the bird to the water, or, giving it a share of the spoil, restores it to its perch. 

 Cormorants nest either in trees or on the ground ; they lay from four to six eggs, and 



the young feed themselves by thrusting their heads far down the parents' throats and helping 



themselves to the half-digested fish which they find there. 



The cormorant has a certain sinister appearance equalled by no other bird, so that its 



introduction in Milton's "Paradise 

 Lost " (Book IV., 1 94) seems particu- 

 larly appropriate. Satan, it will be 

 remembered, is likened to a cor- 

 morant : 



So clomb this first grand Thief into God's 

 fold- 



Thence up he flew, and in the Tree of Life, 

 The middle tree and highest there that grew, 

 Sat like a cormorant. 



The curious bottle-green plumage, 

 green eyes, long hooked beak, and 

 head surmounted by a crest of the 

 smaller sea-loving representative of 

 the two British species were doubt- 

 less familiar enough to Milton before 

 blindness overtook him. 



Some of our readers may have 

 made the acquaintance of the cor- 

 morant's nearest ally, the DARTER, or 

 SNAKE-NECK, in the Fish-house at the 



[Milford-on-Sea. 



Photo by IF. Samite-Kent, F.Z.S.] 



YOUNG PELICANS. 

 Young pelicans never develop long down-feathers, like gannets and frigate-birds. 



