PARTRIDGE—PELICAN. 175 
Praey or Peagy WuiretTHRoat: The WILLOW-WARBLER. 
(Cheshire, West Yorkshire, Shropshire.) Peggy is also 
applied to the WHITETHROAT (Notts. and Yorkshire) 
and the GARDEN-WARBLER, BLACKCAP, WREN and 
CHIFFCHAFF (Yorkshire). 
Pevican. Fr. Pélican from Lat. Pelecanus. This name, now 
restricted to the genus Pelecanus, appears in ancient times 
to have been applied to severa! other birds noteworthy 
on account of their bills, the true Pelican being in fact 
called Onocrotalus by most ancient writers from Pliny to 
Turner, while Willughby has “ Pelecan, Onocrotalus sive 
Pelecanus, Aldrov.”’ Thus we find Turner giving Pelecanus 
as a synonym of the “Shovelard ” or SPOONBILL, and 
he cites Hieronymus’s “‘ Pelecani”’ as being apparently the 
same. The Pelican of Aristophanes, however, is the Wood- 
pecker, or joiner-bird, which with its bill hewed out the 
gates of ‘‘Cloud-Cuckoo-town.” The derivation, in fact, 
is from Ileyexaw, signifying “to hew with an axe,” and 
the Woodpecker was so called from its pecking, the Pelican 
from its large bill, and the Spoonbill from the remarkable 
shape of its bill. That some other birds were also so called 
is certain, and to which species to refer the legend of the 
Pelican feeding its young with its own blood is very un- 
certain. Houghton (‘‘ Natural History of the Ancients,” 
p. 191) thinks that the legend refers to a vulture or eagle, 
and cites the story of Horapollo that the vulture, if it 
cannot get food for its offspring, opens its thigh and allows 
them to partake of the blood. He thinks the story was 
adapted and magnified from the Egyptian fable by the 
ecclesiastical fathers in their annotations on the Scriptures. 
Augustine, for instance, says that the male pelicans “ are 
said to kill their young offspring by blows of their beaks, 
and then to bewail their deaths for the space of three days. 
At length, however, it is said that the mother bird inflicts 
a severe wound on herself, pouring the flowing blood over 
the dead young ones, which instantly brings them to life.” 
Many other writers relate the same story, with variations, 
and in some accounts the fable is that the female bird feeds 
her living young in this manner, in which may be traced a 
return to the Egyptian original. Hieronymus, whose 
Pelican is, as before mentioned, referred by Turner to the 
Spoonbill, says that “‘ Pelecani, when they find their young 
killed by a serpent, mourn, and beat themselves upon their 
sides, and with the blood discharged, they thus bring back 
to life the bodies of the dead,”’ which of course is another 
