THE PELICAN’S CARE OF ITS YOUNG, 125 
cruelly broken, and the bird tied to a tree. 
The cries of the miserable bird, and the 
maimed and helpless condition it appears in, 
bring a number of its species to its aid; and 
each of these latter throw out to it a portion 
of the fish which they had caught for them- 
selves, or were carrying to their young. 
You will easily understand, that the re- 
markable manner in which the Pelican feeds 
its young with fish, sometimes broken or 
prepared, from the enormous pouch, (for 
such, especially when filled, it is,) which 
overhangs its breast, is the origin of the 
fabulous exaggeration, that it feeds them by 
piercing its breast for blood. 
Lebat informs us, that he caught two 
young Pelicans, and tied them by the leg to 
a post stuck into the ground; upon which, 
for several successive days, one of the pa- 
rents regularly came to feed them, remained 
with them the greater part of the day, and 
passed the night upon the branch of a tree 
that hung over them; and the result was, 
that all the three birds became so familiar as 
to suffer themselves to be handled. The 
young ones always took the fish offered to 
M3 
