THE BROWN" PELICAN". 
191 
which raises the wing. The furcula, k, k, l, 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, l, l, 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 Gallinas 
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 PELICA1N. 
\ 
i 
Pelecanus fuscus, Linn. 
PLATE CCCCXXIIL— Male. PLATE CCCCXXIV.— Young. 
The Brown Pelican, which is one of the most interesting of our American 
,.irds, is a constant resident in the Floridas, where it resorts to the Keys and 
{ *ie salt-water inlets, but never enters fresh-water streams, as the White 
Pelican is wont to do. It is rarely seen farther eastward than CapeHatteras, 
b it is found to the south far beyond the limits of the United States. Within 
ti e 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 there 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. 
