Page:The birds of America, volume 7.djvu/44

 32 which raises the wing. The furcula, k, k, I, is anchylosed with the crest of the sternum, at h, has its crura moderately stout and much diverging, and its upper extremity very broad and recurvate. The scapula, of which only the anterior process t, I, is seen, is small. A sternal apparatus like this indicates a steady and powerful flight, the wings being supported upon a very firm basis, and well separated. The great mass of the pectoral muscle being thrown forward, it acts more directly than in such birds as the Gallinse and Ducks, in which it is placed farther backwards, and although its bulk is not so great as in them, it is more advantageously situated. The sternal apparatus of this Pelican is thus extremely similar to that of the Cormorant, and the American Anhinga, and is also constructed on the same plan as that of the Gannets, although in the latter its body is more elongated.

THE BROWN PELICAN.

•f Pelecanus fuscus, Linn.

PLATE CCCCXXIIL— Male. PLATE CCCCXXIV.— Young.

The Brown Pelican, which is one of the most interesting of our American birds, is a constant resident in the Floridas, where it resorts to the Keys and the salt-water inlets, but never enters fresh-water streams, as the White Pelican is wont to do. It is rarely seen farther eastward than Cape Hatteras, but is found to the south far beyond the limits of the United States. Within the recollection of persons still living, its numbers have been considerably reduced, so much indeed that in the inner Bay of Charleston, where twenty or thirty years ago it was quite abundant, very few individuals are now seen, and these chiefly during a continuance of tempestuous weather. There is a naked bar, a few miles distant from the main land, between Charleston and the mouth of the Santee, on which my friend John Bachman some years ago saw a great number of these birds, of which he procured several; but at the present day, few are known to breed farther east than the salt-water inlets running parallel to the coast of Florida, forty or fifty miles south of St. Augustine, where I for the first time met with this Pelican in consider- able numbers.