90 AMERICAN WHITE PELICAN. 
the south-west entrance or mouth of the Mississippi, and afterwards saw 
them in the course of the same season, in almost every inlet, bay, or 
river, as I advanced toward Texas, where I found some of them in 
the Bay of Galveston, on the Ist of May. Nay, while on the Island 
of Grande Terre, I was assured by Mr Anpry, a sugar-planter, who has 
resided there for some years, that he had observed White Pelicans 
along the shores every month of the year. Can it be, that in this 
species of bird, as in many others, barren individuals should remain in 
sections of countries altogether forsaken by those which are repro- 
ductive? The latter, we know, travel to the Rocky Mountains and the 
Fur Countries of the north, and there breed. Or do some of these 
birds, as well as of certain species of our ducks, remain and repro- 
duce in those southern localities, induced to do so by some organic 
or instinctive peculiarity ? Ah, Reader, how little do we yet know of 
the wonderful combinations of Nature’s arrangements, to render every 
individual of her creation comfortable and happy under all the cir- 
cumstances in which they may be placed ! 
My friend Jonn BacuMan, in a note to me, says that “ this bird 
is now more rare on our coast than it was thirty years ago; for I 
have heard it stated that it formerly bred on the sand banks of our 
Bird Islands. I saw a flock on the Bird Banks off Bull’s Island, on 
the 1st day of July 1814, when I procured two full-plumaged old birds, 
and was under the impression that they had laid eggs on one of those 
banks, but the latter had the day previous to my visit been overflowed 
by a spring tide, accompanied with heavy wind.” 
A single pair of our White Pelicans were procured not far from 
Philadelphia, on the Delaware or Schuylkill, ten or twelve years ago. 
These were the only birds of this kind that, I believe, were ever ob- 
served in our Middle Districts, where even the Brown Pelican, Pelecanus 
Jfuscus, is never seen. Nor have I heard that an individual of either 
species has ever been met with on any part of the shores of our 
Eastern States. From these facts, it may be concluded that the 
White Pelicans reach the Fur Countries of Hudson’s Bay by inland 
journeys, and mostly by passing along our great western rivers in the 
spring months, as they are also wont. to do, though with less rapid ~ 
movements, in autumn. 
Reader, I have thought a thousand times perhaps that the present 
state of migration of many of our birds, is in a manner artificial, and 
~— a + We % 
