e the bill and pouch of a pelican. The pouch is an
elastic fishing-net, and the lower mandible is a mere flexible frame to
carry it. Now, I have observed a pelican to make a bounce at the
fish-pail, with outspread wings, and scoop the whole supply. But then
his trouble began. The whole catch hung weightily low in the end of the
pouch, and jerk and heave as he might, he could never lift the load at
the end of that long beak sufficiently high to bolt it. Meanwhile, his
friends collected about him and remonstrated, with many flops and
gobbles, betting him all his fish to nothing that he would lose it after
all; this way they chased that bag, and that way, while the bagger, in
much trepidation and with many desperate heaves, wildly sought remote
corners away from his persecutors. Now, by the corner of the club
premises stands an appliance, the emblem of authority, the instrument of
justice, and the terror of the evilly-disposed pelican--a birch-broom.
This, brandished in the hands of Church, caused a sudden and awful
collapse of the drag-nets, an opening, a shower of fish and many snaps;
wherefrom walked away many pelicans with fish, and one with none, who
had looked to take all. The moral is plain to the verge of ugliness.

[Illustration.]

[Illustration.]

[Illustration.]

[Illustration.]

[Illustration.]

A pelican has no tongue--or none to speak of. It is a mere little knob
scarcely the size of a cherry. The long, long meditations of the pelican
(lasting between feeding times) are given up to consideration whether or
not the disgrace of this deficiency is counter-balanced by the greater
capacity for fish which it gives the pouch. After all, it is only
another instance of that commercial honesty which makes the pelican pay
for his beak out of his legs; he gives his tongue for a pouch. There
should be a legend of the pelican applying honestly to Adam to buy a
pouch, and the wily stork waiting and waiting on the chance of snatching
one without paying for it, until all had been served out; afterwards
living all its life on earth in covetous dudgeon, unconsoled by its
wealth of beak, legs, wings, and neck, and pining hopelessly for the
lost pouch. There are many legends of this sort which ought to exist,
but don't, owing to the negligence of Indian solar myth merchants, or
whoever it is has charge of that class of misrepresentation.

[Illustration.]

The pelican can fly, although you would never believe it, to look