THE PELICAN. 293 



supposed to serve as food for the young, but was also 

 able to reanimate the dead offspring ! Augustine, com- 

 menting on Psalm cii. 5 ' I am like a pelican in the 

 wilderness ' says : ' These birds [male pelicans] are said 

 to kill their young offspring by blows of their beaks, and 

 then to bewail their death for the space of three days. 

 At length, however, it is said the mother bird inflicts a 

 severe wound on herself, pouring the flowing blood over 

 the dead young ones, which instantly brings them to life." 

 To the same effect write Eustathius, Isidorus, Epiphanius, 

 and a host of other writers, except that sometimes it was 

 the female who killed the young ones, while the male 

 reanimated them with its blood. This fable was supposed 

 to be a symbol of Christ's love to men. I think, then, that 

 the very interesting fact of the flamingo feeding the 

 cariama with the red fluid and other contents of its 

 stomach can hardly be, as Mr. Bartlett conjectures, the 

 origin of the old fable of the pelican feeding its young 

 with its blood, because the Egyptian story of the vulture 

 wounding its thigh has nothing analogous to the natural- 

 history fact of the flamingo, while the fable of the pelican 

 pouring from its self-inflicted wound the life-restoring 

 blood which reanimates its offspring is still further from 

 the mark." 



In a short criticism upon the subject in the same 

 number of Land and Water, Mr. H. J. Hancock is 

 inclined to believe that some confusion has arisen in the 



