PELICANS. 185 



contained a single egg, about the size of a hen's-egg, and of a chalky whiteness. 

 Although the nests were upon low bushes, still they were placed just too high for one 

 to reach the eggs without climbing. The difficulty was to get the birds off their 

 nests. Shouting had little or no effect; and even the report of a gun would only 

 rouse a few, who would frequently settle again on the bushes. I threw some stones 

 among them, without producing much result, and even tried to poke them off their 

 seats with my gun ; but they merely snapped their beaks at me in retaliation." 



According to Professor Mivart, the PELECANOIDE^E differ from the two fore- 

 going super-families in possessing a greater number of cervical and cervico-dorsal 

 vertebrae, viz., seventeen to twenty, against fifteen only in the latter. But the most 

 marked feature is, perhaps, the peculiarity in the eighth or ninth cervical vertebra, by 

 which it is angularly articulated with the vertebra in front and behind. By this 

 arrangement is caused the characteristic kink in the neck of these birds, which may be 

 seen plainly in the wood-cuts representing the darter and the cormorant. Indeed, it 

 is literally impossible for these birds to carry their neck straight. This angular condi- 

 tion of the neck is most developed in the darters ; in a less marked degree in the 

 cormorants, and still less so in the gannets and pelicans, though observable in all. 



Other distinctive characters of the skeleton as compared with the tropic-birds and 

 frigate-birds are the presence of one to three distinct sacral vertebrae, the moderate 

 size of the lateral acetabular fossa, and the presence of fully or nearly completed 

 haemal arches to some of the vertebrae ; " but in Fregata and Phaethon, not only are 

 there none, but no tendency to form haemal arches is exhibited." The hind margin 

 of the breast-bone has only one lateral process on each side. 



We recognize four groups of equal rank, since it seems " difficult to unite together 

 any two of them to the exclusion of the others." Of these four families Professor 

 Mivart thinks that the darters, as the most exceptional and differentiated type, should 

 form one end of the series, to be begun with the pelicans, which in some points, at 

 least, appears the least differentiated and most generalized form. 



Accordingly we commence with the PELECANIDJE, the pelicans proper, the appear- 

 ance of which, with the enormous pouch suspended between the branches of the lower 

 jaw, is so familiar to everybody that we feel at liberty to dispense with a general 

 description, the more so, as the accompanying cut will revive in the imagination of 

 our reader the picture of this grotesque bird if some details should have faded out of 

 the memory. 



In one anatomical feature, at least, the pelicans stand quite isolated, and Huxley 

 considered it to be so important that upon it he based a subdivision of the order 

 into two groups, one to contain the pelicans, the other embracing all the other ' Dys- 

 poromorphae.' Here is his description of the peculiarity: "In the Pelecanidaa the 

 inferior edge of the ossified interorbital septum rises rapidly forward, so as to leave a 

 space at the base of the skull, which is filled by a triangular crest formed by the union 

 of the greatly developed ascending processes of the palatines." 



One external character only shall here be mentioned ; viz., that the tail consists of 

 twenty-four rather soft rectrices, a feature well worth noting, since in all the other 

 families are the tail feathers very stiff, and their maximum number sixteen. 



Pelicans are found in the New World as well as in the eastern hemisphere, but 

 they are confined to the tropics, and the warmer portions of the temperate regions, 

 though a single species or two may breed in more northern localities where the sum- 

 mers are warm. 



