THE PELICAN. 385 



times more capacious, the dry and parched sand of the burn- 

 ing desert would soon suck up a supply so insignificant for 

 an animal which, at one draught, would take up the water 

 imported by a flight of Pelicans. 



But without going into fabulous history, this bird has 

 true wonders enough to excite our admiration and astonish- 

 ment. 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 

 between 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 height. 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 surrounding 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 confusion fill their pouches, and devour their contents 

 at their leisure. 



The Eussians, who have ample means of observing their 

 habits, owing to the immense flights arriving annually from 

 the Black Sea and the Sea of Azof, and alighting at the 

 mouth of the river Don, assert that the Pelicans take the 



* Page 52. 

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