Note 7 — THE WHITE PELICAN Pelecanus Onocrotalus

I regret, however, to have to write that this idea of self-sacrifice is really all bunkum. The tradition is, that when hard up, and the offspring were calling out for the food that was not, the mother bird would lacerate her own bosom and with her own life-blood feed and save her loved ones. Ages ago some poor, short-sighted man got this extraordinary notion from apparently watching the way the young are fed. The Pelican belongs to an order of birds that disgorges the food it has caught, in this case fish, into the upturned mouths of the young. Had this first short-sighted one only known that the Pelican’s Hebrew name Kâath means “to vomit,” this bird would hardly have been accredited with virtues it does not possess, or been painted, sculptured, and enshrined in thousands of holy places.