THE PELICAN. 
885 
times more capacious, the dry and parched sand of the burn- 
ing desert would soon suck up a supply so insignificant for 
an animal which, at one draught, would take up the water 
imported by a flight of Pelicans. 
But without going into fabulous history, this bird has 
true wonders enough to excite our admiration and astonish- 
ment. Looking at its vast dimensions, six feet from the 
point of the hill to end of the tail, we should suppose that 
there would he a corresponding weight to he borne upwards 
by its vast spreading wings, twelve feet from tip to tip, and 
yet its entire skeleton does not weigh much more than thirty 
ounces, its hones being so light, as to he nearly transparent. 
It possesses also, in a high degree, the capacity for containing 
air, already spoken of, # when we treated of the lightness of 
some birds ; its hones and feathers, as well as the space 
between the skin and the flesh, being all reservoirs of air. 
Thus furnished, the Pelicans will frequently, like the other 
air-supplied birds, rise to an immense height. In one 
respect, indeed, this lightness operates against its procuring 
fish; for so large a surface of so light a weight cannot easily 
he forced under water. 
The Pelicans, aware of their inability to catch their prey 
under water, in consequence of this buoyancy, adopt an equally 
certain mode of supplying themselves ; for assembling in 
flocks, they unite their forces, and surrounding a shoal of 
fish, strike the water with their wings ; and with the noisy 
splashing frighten and drive them into a narrower compass, 
so that the shoal at length becomes much compressed : the 
upper part is thus raised by the lower, when, at a certain 
signal, all the Pelicans strike the water again, and in the 
general confusion fill their pouches, and devour their contents 
at their leisure. 
The Russians, who have ample means of observing their 
habits, owing to the immense flights arriving annually from 
the Black Sea and the sea of Azof, and alighting at the 
mouth of the river Don, assert that the Pelicans take the 
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