CHARACTERISTICS. 127 
tentively to its harmony, though its own 
voice was little pleasanter than the braying 
of an ass.” The Emperor Maximilian had 
a tame Pelican which always attended his 
army on its march. 
The Pelican, like every other creature, 
can also be sportive. One kept tame at 
the Cape of Good Hope, used to play with 
g, whose head she often took into 
her bill and pouch. As to the size of these, 
a great Do 
when fully extended, it is averred, not only 
that a man’s head may enter and be hidden in 
them, but that a man has been seen to put 
his whole leg, to the knee, boot and all, and 
perfectly hide it. 
Considering all that we now know of the 
habits and virtues of the Pelican, it might 
seem extraordinary, (if we had not the living 
bird before us, of which the appearance in- 
dicates so much of what I am going to 
qualify,) that the name of this bird should 
so continually recur in the Hebrew Scrip- 
tures as an image of solitude and melancholy, 
&c. accompanied, in all modern books of na- 
tural history, with reproaches of gluttony, 
voracity, stupidity, and heaviness. But the 
