The flesh of the Cormorant is very seldom eaten, as it has a fishy flavour which is far from agreeable. To eat an old Cormorant is indeed almost impossible, but the young birds may be rendered edible by taking them as soon as killed, skinning them, removing the whole of the interior, wrapping them in cloths, and burying them for some time in the ground. THE PELICAN. The Pelican of the wilderness--Attitudes of the bird--Its love of solitude--Mode of feeding the young--Fables regarding the Pelican--Breeding-places of the bird--The object of its wide wings and large pouch--Colour of the Pelican. It has been mentioned that in two passages of Scripture, the word which is translated in the Authorized Version as Cormorant, ought to have been rendered as PELICAN. These, however, are not the first passages in which we meet with the word _kaath_. The name occurs in the two parallel passages of Lev. xi. and Deut. xiv. among the list of birds which are proscribed as food. Passing over them, we next come to Ps. cii. 6. In this passage, the sacred writer is lamenting his misery: "By reason of the voice of my groaning my bones cleave to my skin. "I am like a pelican of the wilderness: I am like an owl of the desert." In these sentences, we see that the Kaath was a bird of solitude that was to be found in the "wilderness," _i.e._ far from the habitations of man. This is one of the characteristics of the Pelican, which loves not the neighbourhood of human beings, and is fond of resorting to broad, uncultivated lands, where it will not be disturbed. In them it makes its nest and hatches its young, and to them it retires after feeding, in order to digest in quiet the ample meal which it has made. Mr. Tristram well suggests that the metaphor of the Psalmist may allude to the habit common to the Pelican and its kin, of sitting motionless for hours after it has gorged itself with food, its head sunk on its shoulders, and its bill resting on its breast. This is but one of the singular, and often grotesque, attitudes in which the Pelican is in the habit of indulging. [Illustration: 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.