286 The Animal-Lore of Shahspeare’s Time. 
form of the fable was that the “ kind, life-rendering 
pelican ” adopted this means of feeding the young ones 
when urged by necessity; but still a notion seems to have 
been current that the young birds in some cases acted as 
aggressors, instead of being grateful recipients of their 
parent’s bounty. Shakspeare evidently has this idea in 
his mind in Richard II. Gaunt retorts :— 
“ 0, spare me not, my brother Edward’s son, 
For that I was his father Edward’s son ; 
That blood already, like the pelican, 
Hast thou tapp’d out, and drunkenly caroused.” 
(.Richard II., ii. 1, 124.) 
In the Mirror for Magistrates we read that a like 
bitter complaint was made by Henry II. against the ill- 
treatment and ingratitude he had received from his 
sons:— 
“ Whereof to leave a long memoriall 
In minde of man evermore to rest, 
A picture hee made and hung it in his hall 
Of a pellicane sitting on his nest, 
With four yong byrdes, three pecking at his brest, 
With bloudy beakes, and furder did devise, 
The youngest byrde to pecke the father’s eyes.” 
(Yol. ii. p. 132, ed. Haslewood, 1815.) 
The amiable qualities of the pelican could not, however, 
compensate, in the eyes of Sir John Hawkins, for her want 
of personal attraction. In the account of his second 
voyage made to the coast of Guinea, 1564, he tells us:— 
“ Of the sea-fowle above all other not common in England, I noted the 
pellicane, which is fained to be the lovingst bird that is; but for all 
this lovingnesse she is very deformed to beholde; for she is of colour 
russet; notwithstanding in Guinea I have scene of them as white as a 
swan, having legs like the same, and a body like a hearne, with a long 
necke, and a thick long beake, from the nether jaw whereof downe to 
the breast passeth a skinne of such a bignesse, as is able to receive a 
fish as big as one’s thigh, and this her big throat and long bill both 
make her seem so ougly! ” ( Hakluyt , vol. iii. p. 616.) 
