DALMATIAN PELICAN. 135 



the telescope enabled us from the high ground to see was tenanted 

 by a separate colony. The largest lakelet was entirely enclosed with 

 a thick wall of reeds like a park with a ring fence, through which 

 the boatman was with difficulty persuaded to penetrate. It required 

 two hours' hard labour to force the boat through; and so secure 

 did the Pelicans feel in their nests, that they allowed themselves to 

 be examined through a break in the reeds. 



The labour was, however, well repaid, for when we burst into 

 their sanctum we found a colony of thirty-one nests, arranged, as in 

 all the other lakelets, in the shape of a horseshoe, placed a short way 

 in front of the wall of reeds, and at an almost uniform distance from 

 each other. They were all made of pieces of old reeds, and formed 

 truncated pyramids from a foot and a half to two feet above the water, 

 the apex slightly hollowed out, and apparently very small for so large 

 a bird. The boatmen, who had lived near the lake and fished it 

 for thirty years, said they never laid more than two eggs, and only 

 in one nest out of upwards of a hundred examined did we find so 

 many as three. All the birds were sitting with their backs to the 

 wall of reeds, facing and looking towards the centre of the horseshoe, 

 so that, from whatever quarter a cause for alarm might spring, 

 immediate notice could be taken of it. No other bird of any des- 

 cription was seen in this paradise of Pelicans. The eggs vary much 

 both in size and appearance. The length varies from four inches 

 and one tenth to three inches and one tenth, while in breadth the 

 difference was from two inches and a half to two inches and three 

 tenths. Some of them were beautifully smooth and polished; others, 

 again, were coarse, rough, and uneven, like badly cut chalk. In the 

 pouch of one bird seventeen fishes were found, from four inches to 

 nine inches long. The expanse of wings was eleven feet." 



The adult male and female have on the head and neck an abundant 

 coiifure of long white feathers, slightly twisted and silky; all the 

 feathers of the head and neck are narrow filaments more or less 

 contorted; those of the crop are straight, aw]-shaped, shining, and of 

 a yellowish tinge; the abdomen greyish white; all the upper parts, 

 including the wings, are covered with long white feathers, of which 

 the shafts are blackish; tail of silvery white, with black shafts; primaries 

 black, with their bases silvery white, running into grey on the inner 

 web, — the tips are also greyish; the secondaries white, with their 

 extremities silvery grey. The eye is surrounded by a yellowish 

 red naked patch, of which the tint becomes bluish near the beak; 

 superior mandible grey, spotted with blue and red. The guttural 

 pouch orange, more or less varied with yellowish grey, and on each 



