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AMERICAN WHITE PELICAN. 
PELECANUS AMERICANUS. 
PLATE CCCXI. Anpurttr Mate. 
I FEEL great pleasure, good Reader, in assuring you, that our White 
Pelican, which has hitherto been considered the same as that found in 
Europe, is quite different. In consequence of this discovery, I have 
honoured it with the name of my beloved country, over the mighty 
streams of which, may this splendid bird wander free and unmolested 
to the most distant times, as it has already done from the misty ages 
of unknown antiquity. 
In Dr Ricuarvson’s Introduction to the second volume of the 
Fauna Boreali-Americana, we are informed, that the Pelecanus Onocro- 
talus (which is the bird now named P. Americanus) flies in dense 
flocks all the summer in the fur countries. At page 472, the same in- 
trepid traveller says, that ‘“ Pelicans are numerous in the interior of 
the fur countries up to the sixty-first parallel ; but they seldom come 
within two hundred miles of Hudson’s Bay. They deposit their eggs 
usually on rocky islands, on the brink of cascades, where they can 
scarcely be approached ; but they are otherwise by no means shy birds.” 
My learned friend also speaks of the ‘‘ long thin bony process seen on 
the upper mandible of the bill of this species ;” and although neither 
he nor Mr Swarnson pointed out the actual differences otherwise exist- 
ing between this and the European species, he states that no such ap- 
pearance has been described as occurring on the bills of the White Pe- 
licans of the old Continent. 
When, somewhat more than thirty years ago, I first removed to 
Kentucky, Pelicans of this species were frequently seen by me on the 
sand-bars of the Ohio, and on the rock-bound waters of the rapids 
of that majestic river, situated, as you well know, between Louisville 
and Shippingport. Nay when, a few years afterwards, I established 
myself at Henderson, the White Pelicans were so abundant that I of- 
ten killed several at a shot, on a well known sand-bar, which protects 
Canoe Creek Island. During those delightful days of my early man- 
hood, how often have I watched them with delight! Methinks in- 
