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, 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. [Sidenote: 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. [Illustration] APPENDIX. A TABLE OF ORNITHOLOGICAL ALLUSIONS