188 
THE PELICAN'S POUCH. 
series of a frizzled peruke, an academician's wig, and a pair of 
spectacles ! Yet we may reasonably infer that the colossal form was 
called into existence for some useful purpose. It is not that he may 
stow away his fish in his belly, that our fishing-bird has been pro- 
vided with a game-bag or fish-basket. And observe, that of all the 
piscivores he is the only one which is thus equipped. His beak, slender, 
straight, and compressed, measures ten to twelve inches. The upper 
mandible consists of one thin flat plate or blade, an inch wide, which is 
strengthened in the middle by a longitudinal ridge, terminating with 
a hooked tip. This upper mandible is hermetically encased, as it were, 
between the two rims of the lower, which are separated from one 
another by a void, the opening to a "yawning abyss;" the said "yawn- 
ing abyss " consisting of a double membranous pouch, diaphanous and 
largely expansible, which Nature has stitched to the neck and the 
inferior sides of the bill, to serve as a portable bag-net. 
Formerly science attributed to this remarkable apparatus a pur- 
pose which was wholly chimerical and absurd. In its simplicity it 
pretended that Nature intended it for a kind of " meat-safe," because 
the bird had often very long journeys to make in carrying home food 
to the young ! The ancient writers, Hebrew and Roman, were not less 
fanciful in their conjectures. Some said that the pelican was a great 
eater, with a constitutional incapacity for profiting by what he ate, 
so that he was compelled to keep an immense provision in reserve. 
Others, taking the opposite extreme, affirmed that he was a sensual 
gastrosophist, with an affection for fish high-flavoured, and, moreover, 
" done to a turn." Tlieir idea of the pouch was of a kind of vestibule 
or first stomach, in which the fish underwent a preliminary stew. 
When it was sufficiently tender, the bird swallowed it, and submitted 
it to a further and final process of cooking in the furnace of his second 
stomach ; after which he ejected it, picked it up again, and dined off it 
voluptuously, being particularly careful to throw aside the bones and 
scales. The natural and only correct solution, however, is this : the 
pelican has been supplied with a pouch to stow away the fish, because 
he is not designed to work only for himself; and, as his vigour of 
wing and muscular strength shelter him from the attacks of vulgar 
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