SLUR As, ELERONS, AND PELICAN TRIBE 61 
Pelicans are natives of the tropical and 
temperate regions of the Old and New Worlds, 
and live in flocks often numbering many thou- 
sands. The nest is placed on the ground, and 
thercin are deposited two white eggs. The young 
are helpless for some time after hatching. 
In all some six-and-thirty species of 
CORMORANTS are known to science, of which two 
are commonly to be met with round the British 
coasts, one of which also travels inland to establish 
itself on such lakes and rivers as may afford it 
support. 
In various parts of the world cormorants are 
taken when young and trained to catch fish: 
sometimes for sport, or—as in China—to furnish 
a livelihood for their owners. At one time the 
Master of the Cormorants was one of the officers 
in the Royal Household of England, the post Photo by D. Le Souf) [Melbourne 
having been created in 1611 by James I. The Fe ees nace ia nee Ua ere 
method of hunting is as follows :—After fastening Pelicans, like gannets and cormorants, are hatched perfectly naked 
: : Z ie ft and quite blind 
a ring around the neck, the bird is cast off into 
the water, and, diving immediately, makes its way beneath the surface with incredible speed, 
and, seizing one fish after another, rises in a short space of time with its mouth full and 
throat distended by the fish, which it has been unable to swallow by reason of the restraining 
ring. With these captures it dutifully returns to its keeper, who deftly removes the fish, and 
either returns the bird to the water, or, giving it a share of the spoil, restores it to its perch 
Cormorants nest either in trees or on the ground; they lay from four to six eggs, and 
the young feed themselves by thrusting their heads far down the parents’ throats and helping 
themselves to the half-digested fish which they find there. 
The cormorant has a certain sinister appearance equalled by no other bird, so that its 
introduction in Milton’s ‘ Paradise 
Lost” (Book IV., 194) seems particu- 
larly appropriate. Satan, it will be 
remembered, is likened to a cor- 
morant :— 
So clomb this first grand Thief into God’s 
fold : 
Thence up he flew, and in the Tree of Life, 
The middle tree and highest there that grew, 
Sat like a cormorant. 
The curious bottle-green plumage, 
green eyes, long hooked beak, and 
head surmounted by a crest of the 
smaller sea-loving representative of 
the two British species were doubt- 
less familiar enough to Milton before 
blindness overtook him. 
Some of our readers may have 
made the acquaintance of the cor- 
morant’s nearest ally, the DARTER, or 
Young pelicans never develop long down-feathers, like gannets and frigate-birds SNAKE-NECK, in the Fish-house at the 
5 
Photo by HW”, Saville-Kent, F. Z S. 
YOUNG PELICANS 
