REMINISCENCES FROM THE MELBOURNE ZOO. 
103 
THE PELICAN. 
One last remaining pelican reflects upon the uses and abuses of 
solitude at the Zoo to-day. He looks as if his reflections are sad ones 
— as if he is a “has-been” rather than a “never-waser.” Certainly he 
has been in happier surroundings. Time was when he found himself 
monarch of a score of smaller birds, when there were young broods dart- 
Before he was found out. 
ing here and there on the pond like fire-flies, and there was no one to 
tell precisely why they were missing if one or two of them were absent 
from roll call. But discovery tracked him down when his easy morals 
made him reckless of consequences. There were four-and-twenty 
ducklings in two broods, and they were a promising flock indeed. But 
by threes and fours they vanished as softly and suddenly as if they had 
been seen by the Snark — the Snark that was a Boojum! No one could 
understand it at all; but at last, when there were only four left, the 
mystery was revealed. A keeper happened to be passing the pond in the 
early morning hours when a sudden quacking and commotion attracted 
his attention, and he was just in time to see a duckling hauled out of 
