This is but one of the singular, and often grotesque, attitudes in which the Pelican is in the habit of indulging.
THE PELICAN.
There are before me a number of sketches made of the Pelicans at the Zoological Gardens, and in no two cases does one attitude in the least resemble another. In one sketch the bird is sitting in the attitude which has just been described. In another it is walking, or rather staggering, along, with its head on one side, and its beak so closed that hardly a vestige of its enormous pouch can be seen. Another sketch shows the same bird as it appeared when angry with a companion, and scolding its foe in impotent rage; while another shows it basking in the sun, with its magnificent wings spread and shaking in the warm beams, and its pouch hanging in folds from its chin.
One of the most curious of these sketches shows the bird squatting on the ground, with its head drawn back as far as possible, and sunk so far among the feathers of the back and shoulders that only a portion of the head itself can be seen, while the long beak is hidden, except an inch or two of the end. In this attitude it might easily be mistaken at a little distance for an oval white stone.
The derivation of the Hebrew word kaath is a very curious one. It is taken from a verb signifying "to vomit," and this derivation has been explained in different ways.
The early writers, who were comparatively ignorant of natural history, thought that the Pelican lived chiefly on molluscs, and that, after digesting the animals, it rejected their shells, just as the owl and the hawk reject the bones, fur, and feathers of their prey.
They thought that the Pelican was a bird of a hot temperament, and that the molluscs were quickly digested by the heat of the stomach.