IN THE ENGLISH FENS. 
295 
speak more correctly, a species of pelican, once inhabited 
the English fens. 
The peat-bogs of Cambridgeshire have yielded of late 
years a large number of bones of birds, and amongst 
these has been discovered the wing-bone of a pelican. 
This interesting discovery was made known by M. Al¬ 
phonse Milne-Edwards, in an able article in the “Annales 
des Sciences Naturelles,”* a translation of which subse¬ 
quently appeared in The Ibis.\ The author thus antici¬ 
pates the objections of the sceptical:— 
“We may be inclined, perhaps, to wonder that a single 
bone, belonging (as it does) to a young animal, and con¬ 
sequently not presenting all its anatomical characters, 
should permit the exact recognition of the genus and 
species of bird to which it belongs. So precise a determi¬ 
nation would not be always possible, but in the present 
case there need be no doubt; for I have shown, in another 
work,| that the wing-bone in the genus Pelicanus offers 
extremely clear distinctive peculiarities, which do not 
allow of its being confounded with that of any other 
bird.” 
The only species of pelican which has been recorded to 
have occurred in England in recent times, is the great 
white pelican, P. onocrotalus. 
* Cinquieme series, tom. viii. pp. 285-293. 
f Ibis, 1868, pp. 363-370. 
X “ Oiseaux Fossiles de la France,” p. 230. 
