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. Alphonse Milne-Edwards, in an able article in the “Annales des Sciences Naturelles,”[169] a translation of which subsequently appeared in The Ibis.[170] The author thus anticipates 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 consequently 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 determination would not be always possible, but in the present case there need be no doubt; for I have shown, in another work,[171] 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 PELICAN IN ENGLAND.
The only species of pelican which has been recorded to have occurred in England in recent times, is the great white pelican, P. onocrotalus.
Latham has stated,[172] on the authority of Sir Thomas Brown, that a pelican of this species was killed in Horsey Fen in 1663. This statement was copied by Montagu,[173] and subsequently by Dr. Fleming,[174] but there is no evidence to show that the bird was a wild one. On the contrary, it is probable, as suggested by Sir Thomas Brown, that it may have been one of the King’s pelicans which was lost about that time from St. James’s Park.
He says[175]:—“An onocrotalus, or pelican, shot upon Horsey Fen, May 22, 1663, which, stuffed and cleaned, I yet retain. It was three yards and a half between the extremities of the wings; the chowle and beak answering the usual description; the extremities of the wings for a span deep brown; the rest of the body white; a fowl which none could remember upon this coast.
“About the same time, I heard one of the king’s pelicans was lost at St. James’s; perhaps this might be the same.”
Latham was further assured by Dr. Leith, that in the month of May he saw a brown pelican fly over his head on Blackheath, in Kent. Montagu, however, suggests that the bird was an immature swan.
In The Zoologist for 1856 (p. 5321), the Rev. H. B. Tristram has recorded, that on the 25th of August, 1856,