32 THE BROWN PELICAN. 



which raises the wing. The furcula, k, k, I, is anchylosed with the crest of 

 the sternum, at h, has its crura moderately stout and much diverging, and 

 its upper extremity very broad and recurvate. The scapula, of which only 

 the anterior process t, I, is seen, is small. A sternal apparatus like this 

 indicates a steady and powerful flight, the wings being supported upon a 

 very firm basis, and well separated. The great mass of the pectoral muscle 

 being thrown forward, it acts more directly than in such birds as the Gallinse 

 and Ducks, in which it is placed farther backwards, and although its bulk is 

 not so great as in them, it is more advantageously situated. The sternal 

 apparatus of this Pelican is thus extremely similar to that of the Cormorant, 

 and the American Anhinga, and is also constructed on the same plan as that 

 of the Gannets, although in the latter its body is more elongated. 



THE BROWN PELICAN. 



•f Pelecanus fuscus, Linn. 



PLATE CCCCXXIIL— Male. PLATE CCCCXXIV.— Young. 



The Brown Pelican, which is one of the most interesting of our American 

 birds, is a constant resident in the Floridas, where it resorts to the Keys and 

 the salt-water inlets, but never enters fresh-water streams, as the White 

 Pelican is wont to do. It is rarely seen farther eastward than Cape Hatteras, 

 but is found to the south far beyond the limits of the United States. Within 

 the recollection of persons still living, its numbers have been considerably 

 reduced, so much indeed that in the inner Bay of Charleston, where twenty 

 or thirty years ago it was quite abundant, very few individuals are now seen, 

 and these chiefly during a continuance of tempestuous weather. There is a 

 naked bar, a few miles distant from the main land, between Charleston and 

 the mouth of the Santee, on which my friend John Bachman some years 

 ago saw a great number of these birds, of which he procured several; but at 

 the present day, few are known to breed farther east than the salt-water 

 inlets running parallel to the coast of Florida, forty or fifty miles south of 

 St. Augustine, where I for the first time met with this Pelican in consider- 

 able numbers. 



