THE PELICAN. 
149 
These birds are torpid and inactive to the last degree, so 
that nothing can exceed their indolence but their gluttony; 
for were they not excited to labour by the stimulus of 
hunger, they would always continue in fixed repose. They 
will often sit for whole days and nights on rocks and branches 
of trees, motionless, and in a melancholy posture, till the 
cravings of the stomach compel them to seek for food. 
When they have raised themselves about thirty or forty 
feet above the surface of the sea, they turn their head with 
one eye downward, and continue to fly in that posture. As 
soon as they perceive a fish sufficiently near the surface, 
they dart down with the swiftness of an arrow, seize it with 
unerring certainty, and store it up in their pouch : they 
then rise again, and continue hovering and fishing, till their 
bag is filled ; when they retire to land, and greedily devour 
the fruits of their industry. They then sink to sleep, 
and remain inert till again obliged to provide for their sub- 
sistence. 
The same habits of indolence seem to attend the Pelican 
in every situation ; for the female does not prepare for the 
duties of incubation, but drops her eggs on the bare ground, 
to the number of five or six, and there contrives to hatch 
them. It is a mere poetical fiction that the Pelican feeds 
her young with blood from her own breast. Her little 
progeny, however, seem to call forth some maternal affec- 
tions ; for its young have been taken and tied by the leg to 
