the remains of a pelican were picked up on the shore at Castle Eden, Durham. Such are the scanty records of the appearance of a pelican in England in modern times.
The bone found in Cambridgeshire may have belonged to P. onocrotalus, a native of South and South-Eastern Europe, and which is stated to be “common on the lakes and watercourses of Hungary and Russia, and also seen further south in Asia and in Northern Africa.” M. Milne-Edwards, however, has not quite determined the species, for, on comparison with the bones of other recognized and existing species, it appears to differ rather remarkably in its greater length.
Enough has probably been said, however, to show the interest which attaches to the discovery, and to suggest further research.
With the pelican ends the long list of birds mentioned in the works of Shakespeare.
CONCLUSION.
The reader who has had the patience or the curiosity to follow us thus far will, doubtless, ere this have formed a just estimate of Shakespeare’s qualifications as a naturalist, and will have drawn the only conclusion which the evidence justifies.
It is impossible to read all that Shakespeare has written in connection with ornithology, without being struck with the extraordinary knowledge which he has displayed for the age in which he lived; and our admiration for him as
a poet must be increased tenfold on perceiving that the beauteous thoughts, which he has clothed in such beauteous language, were dictated by a pure love of nature, and by a study of those great truths which appeal at once to the heart and to reason, and which infuse into the soul of the naturalist the true spirit of poetry.
