190 
A NOVEL MODE OF FISHING. 
to its rankness, oiliness, and strong fishy odour ; an incontestable proof 
that man has more services to expect from these species during their 
life than after their death. The pouch, which in form, volume, and 
colour resembles an enormous pig's bladder, is used in many countries 
as a receptacle for tobacco. The ladies of Spanish America do not dis- 
dain to embroider and filigree it with their dainty fingers, metamor- 
phosing a fisher's equipment into a souvenir of love. The bird's bones 
are said to make excellent pipe-stems and incomparable flageolets. 
Aldrovandus accuses a pelican of Ethiopia of having concealed one 
day a child in his pouch, and carried it high up into the air ! But the 
story is ridiculously incredible. The pelican, says Toussenel, has as 
little taste for human flesh as for mischievous practical jokes. He is a 
bird of gentle nature, and quite incapable of a sorry trick or a shameful 
action to make the silly laugh. Readers who have not yet made 
acquaintance with Aldi'ovandus, are warned that his pages are by no 
means edifying. 
For eighty centuries, or more, the pelicans in their fisheries have 
adopted the processes of the madrague and the seine. Everybody has 
not had the good fortune to see the blue waters of the historic Medi- 
terranean, or to be present at the tunny fishery a la madrague ; but 
most persons have seen the seine-net in operation. It is an immense 
net which is thrown right across a stream, and afterwards drawn 
towards the bank by one of its corners, so as to describe a kind of 
ellipse ; while the fishermen, posted below it, beat the waters until the 
fish are driven into the circular enclosure formed by the two sides of 
the net. As the pelicans, with all their knowledge, are ignorant of 
the art of net-making, they are compelled to make up for the want of 
engines by prodigious efibrts of strategic genius. And in so doing they 
afford a remarkable illustration of the power of association, a power 
which in human life is productive of such marvellous results. 
We have not forgotten that most fishes, like most birds, are im- 
petuous navigators, whose fins " itch " at certain epochs of the year, 
and who are arrested in their wayward wanderings only by lack of 
water. The movement is universal, and makes itself felt in fresh 
