THE PELICAN. 
293 
supposed to serve as food for the young, but was also 
able to reanimate the dead offspring ! Augustine, com¬ 
menting on Psalm cii. 5—‘ I am like a pelican in the 
wilderness ’—says : ‘ These birds [male pelicans] are said 
to kill their young offspring by blows of their beaks, and 
then to bewail their death for the space of three days. 
At length, however, it is said the mother bird inflicts a 
severe wound on herself, pouring the flowing blood over 
the dead young ones, which instantly brings them to life.” 
To the same effect write Eustathius, Isidorus, Epiphanius, 
and a host of other writers, except that sometimes it was 
the female who killed the young ones, while the male 
reanimated them with its blood. This fable was supposed 
to be a symbol of Christs love to men. I think, then, that 
the very interesting fact of the flamingo feeding the 
cariama with the red fluid and other contents of its 
stomach can hardly be, as Mr. Bartlett conjectures, the 
origin of the old fable of the pelican feeding its young 
with its blood, because the Egyptian story of the vulture 
wounding its thigh has nothing analogous to the natural- 
history fact of the flamingo, while the fable of the pelican 
pouring from its self-inflicted wound the life-restoring 
blood which reanimates its offspring is still further from 
the mark.” 
In a short criticism upon the subject in the same 
number of Land and Water , Mr. H. J. Hancock is 
inclined to believe that some confusion has arisen in the 
