164 FACULTIES OF BIRDS. 



'course, stretched the skin which lies between the 

 under chops, as being 1 the most yielding part of the 

 mouth. Every distension increased the cavity. The 

 original bird, and many generations which succeeded 

 him, might find difficulty enough in making the 

 pouch answer this purpose ; but future pelicans, 

 entering upon life with a pouch derived from their 

 progenitors, of considerable capacity, would more 

 readily accelerate its advance to perfection, by fre- 

 quently pressing 1 down the sac with the weight of 

 fish which it might now be made to contain. 



"These, or of this kind, are the analogies relied 

 upon. Now, in the first place, the instances them- 

 selves are unauthenticated by testimony, and, in 

 theory, to say the least of them, open to great 

 objections. The instance of the pelican, which ap- 

 pears to me as plausible as any that can be produced, 

 has this against it, that it is a singularity restricted to 

 the species; whereas, if it had its commencement in 

 the cause and manner which have been assigned, the 

 like comportation might be expected to take place in 

 other birds which fed upon fish. How comes it to pass 

 that the pelican alone was the inventress, and her de- 

 scendants the only inheritors of this curious resource ? 



" Upon the whole, after all the schemes and 

 struggles of a reluctant philosophy, the necessary 

 resort is to a Deity. The marks of design are too 

 strong to be gotten over. Design must have had a 

 designer. That designer must have been a person. 

 That person is GOD*." 



The great stretch of wing in the pelican, extending- 

 to eleven or twelve feet, and consequently double 

 that of the swan or the eagle, enables it to support 

 itself for a length of time in the air, where it balances 

 itself with great steadiness, and only changes its place 

 to dart directly downwards on its prey, which rarely 

 * Natural Theology, p. 441, 14th edit. 



