THE PELICAN. 287 
King Lear, too, likens himself to a pelican when speak¬ 
ing of his ungrateful children 
“ Is it the fashion, that discarded fathers 
Should have thus little mercy on their flesh ? 
Judicious punishment! ’T was this flesh begot 
Those pelican daughters.” 
King Lear , Act iii. Sc. 4. 
Again— 
“ K. Richard. ...... 
Dar’st with thy frozen admonition 
Make pale our cheek ; chasing the royal blood 
With fury from his native residence. 
Gaunt. 
That blood already, like the pelican, 
Hast thou tapp’d out, and drunkenly carous’d. 
Richard II. Act ii. Sc. 1. 
It is generally supposed that the fable alluded to is a 
classical one. But this is not the case. Many and 
various explanations have been offered as regards its 
origin, but none is more ingenious, and at the same time 
more plausible, than the explanation suggested by Mr. 
Bartlett, the energetic Superintendent of the Zoological 
Society’s Gardens. In a letter addressed to the editor of 
Land and Water , dated the 3rd April, 1869, Mr. Bartlett 
says :— 
“ Having devoted much attention to investigations upon 
