τῷ πρὸ τῆς κοιλίας τόπῳ), wherein the molluscs are softened. They then throw them up and pick out the flesh from the opened valves. Ælian merely repeats this story, only he says the shell-fish are received into the stomach. In another place he says there is mutual hostility between the pelican and the quail. The pelican was known to the Romans under the name of onocrotalus. Pliny says this bird is like the swan, except that under the throat there is a sort of second crop of astonishing capacity. There is, of course, no doubt that the pelican is here intended. Cicero says there is a bird called platalea which pursues other birds and causes them to drop the fish they have caught, which it devours itself. He then gives the same story as Ælian, viz., that this bird softens shell-fish in its stomach, &c. The first part of this account is true of the parasitic gulls (Lestris). It is uncertain what bird Cicero alludes to by the name platalea. Pliny gives the same story as Cicero, and calls the bird platea. The fable, then, is no classical one. Whence did it originate? Does any pictorial representation occur on the Egyptian monuments, as Mr. Bartlett has been informed? I am inclined to think—but I speak under correction—that such a representation does not occur. Horapollo (i. 54) tells us that when the ancient Egyptians want to represent a fool they depict the pelican, because this bird, instead of laying its eggs on lofty and secure places, merely scratches up the ground
and there lays. The people surround the place with dried cow’s dung, and set fire to it. The pelican sees the smoke, and endeavours to extinguish the fire with her wings, the motion of which only fans the flame. Thus she burns her wings, and falls an easy prey to the fowlers. Some Egyptian priests, considering this behaviour evinces great love of its young, do not eat the bird; others, again, thinking it is a mark of folly, eat it. The Egyptians, however, did believe in a bird feeding its young with its blood, and this bird is none other than a vulture. Horapollo says (i. 11) that a vulture symbolises a compassionate person (ἐλεήμονα), because during the 120 days of its nurture of its offspring, if food cannot be had, ‘it opens its own thigh and permits the young to partake of the blood, so that they may not perish from want.’ This is alluded to in the following lines by Georgius Pisidas:—
Τὸν μηρὸν ἐκτέμοντες, ἡματωμένοις
Γάλακτος ὀλκοῖς ζωπυροῦσι τὰ βρέφη.
Amongst classical authors, the love of the vulture for its young was proverbial. But when do we first hear of the fable of the pelican feeding its young with its blood? In Patristic annotations on the Scriptures. I believe this is the answer. The ecclesiastical fathers transferred the Egyptian story from the vulture to the pelican, but magnified the already sufficiently marvellous fable a hundredfold, for the blood of the parent was not only
supposed to serve as food for the young, but was also able to reanimate the dead offspring! Augustine, commenting 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 Christ’s 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
translation from the original Hebrew. “The word קָאַת (Kàh-ath'), which is rendered πελεκάν in the Septuagint, and Pelican, or Onocrotalus, in the Vulgate, is derived from the verb קָא ‘to vomit,’ and signifies ‘a vomiter.’ This name, evidently a general one, may have been intended by the Hebrew writers to apply either to such birds as, like the pelican and many others, possess the power of disgorging their food on being disturbed or alarmed, or to such birds as are accustomed to nourish their young from their own crops; and, in the latter case, the curious bloody secretion of the flamingo may well have given rise to the superstition concerning the pelican. I may observe, as an evidence that the translators did not consider the Hebrew word to be other than a general name, that Kà-ath' is sometimes rendered ‘cormorant’ (Isa. xxxiv. 11; Zeph. ii. 14). For further information concerning this point, I would refer your readers to the ‘Hebrew and Chaldee Concordance,’ p. 1083; Bate’s ‘Hebrew Dictionary,’ p. 538; and Parkhurst’s ‘Hebrew Dictionary,’ pp. 631, 632.”
Shakespeare, doubtless, had not investigated the subject so narrowly, but was content to accept the common story as he found it, and to apply it metaphorically as occasion required.
IN THE ENGLISH FENS.
The majority of the birds mentioned in this chapter are not natives of the British Islands, but, strange as it may appear, there is evidence to show that the pelican, or, to