AN OLD STORY. 
187 
Reusner, quoted by Mr. Green, tells how Alphonsus, the wise and 
good king of Naples, " with his own honoured hand painted a pelican 
which, with its sharp beak, was laj'ing open its breast so as with its 
own blood to save the lives of its young. Thus for people, for law, it 
is right that a king should die, and by his own death restore life to 
the nations. As by His own death Christ did restore life to tjie 
just; and with life, peace and righteousness." Shakespeare, as is 
usual with him, sums up, in terse but comprehensive phrase, the con- 
clusion of the whole matter : — 
" King. Good Laertes, 
If you desire to know the certainty 
Of your dear father's death, is't writ in your revenge, 
That, swoopstake, you will draw both friend and foe, 
Winner and loser ? 
Laer. None but his enemies. 
King. Will you know them then ? 
Laer. To his good friends thus wide I'll ope my arms ; 
And, like the kind life-rendering pelican, 
Eepast them with my blood." 
But it has long been known that the pelican does nothing of the 
kind. The pretty fable originated doubtlessly in a peculiar movement 
of the bird when disgorging food for the nourishment of his young. 
For this purpose he presses his pouch against his breast; and the 
red tip of the bill, contrasted with the snow-white plumage of the 
breast, may, to a careless observer, have seemed to be embrued in 
blood. 
We know of no account of the pelican by an English naturalist so 
graphic and withal so quaintly picturesque as that which is given 
by the French ornithologist Toussenel. As it is little known to the 
English public, the following condensation may prove acceptable : — 
He begins by affirming that man can hardly help laughing when 
he first catches sight of these grotesque birds which Nature created 
evidently in a gay and sportive mood. As if the immense bill, furrowed 
like a gutter, and supported by a balloon, did not suffice to endow their 
physiognomy with a sufficiently abnormal character, there are some 
species (the Australian) which join to their buffoon's mask the acces- 
