In spite of its great size, the Pelican flies easily and to considerable distances. It is no diver, but will occasionally dash down on fish from a considerable height, and with such velocity that it becomes submerged; but its buoyancy instantly brings it to the surface again. It perches on trees, but seems to prefer rocks. When it builds a nest, it is generally formed of coarse reedy grass, lined with softer material, placed in the cleft of dry rocks near the water. Here the female deposits two, three, four, sometimes five white eggs, but most frequently only two. They are occasionally satisfied with placing their eggs in an indentation in the ground which they have roughly lined with blades of grass. After an incubation lasting from forty to forty-five days, the young ones, covered with a greyish down, are hatched. The female feeds them: she presses the hooked red point of the mandible against her breast, which causes her to disgorge the fish it contains into the bills of the young ones, the male performing the same operation on himself for the benefit of his partner. This is probably the fact that has given origin to the absurd fable that the female Pelican is in the habit of piercing her breast in order to nourish her young with her maternal blood. The young birds are easily tamed. It is even asserted that they are susceptible of education, and that, like the young Cormorants, they can be taught to fish for their masters. The Pelican is more common in tropical regions than in temperate climates. They are very numerous in Africa, Siam, Madagascar, the Sunda Isles, the Philippines, Manilla, and in the Western Hemisphere they abound from the Antilles to the northern temperate part of the South American continent. The true Pelicans are large birds with powerful wings, and are excellent swimmers. The pouch has extraordinary elasticity, and is capable of containing a number of fish either for its own consumption or the nourishment of its young. It haunts the neighbourhood of rivers and lakes and the sea-coast, being rarely seen more than twenty leagues from the land. Levaillant describes one of those wonderful ornithological scenes which only occur in uninhabited regions. At the entrance of Saldanha Bay, on the south-west coast of Africa, after wading through the surf and clambering up the rocks, "all of a sudden there arose from the surface of the Island of Dassen-Eyland an impenetrable cloud, which formed, at the distance of forty feet above our heads, an immense canopy, composed of birds of almost every kind of water-fowl--Cormorants, Sea Gulls, Sea Swallows, Pelicans, and I believe the whole winged tribes of this part of Africa were here assembled. Their voices, harsh and discordant, formed a noise so unmusical that I was every moment compelled to cover my head in order to relieve my ears. The alarm we created was so much the more general, inasmuch as the birds disturbed were chiefly sitting females. They had nests, eggs, and young