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Pelican   /pˈɛləkən/   Listen
Pelican

noun
(Written also pelecan)
1.
Large long-winged warm-water seabird having a large bill with a distensible pouch for fish.



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"Pelican" Quotes from Famous Books



... night absorbed in reflection amid the wonder of the spectators; how on another occasion he had saved Alcibiades' life; how at the battle of Delium, after the defeat, he might be seen stalking about like a pelican, rolling his eyes as Aristophanes had described him in the Clouds. He is the most wonderful of human beings, and absolutely unlike anyone but a satyr. Like the satyr in his language too; for he uses the commonest words as the outward ...
— Symposium • Plato

... should study the insect because we are his inferiors. The old moralists merely took the virtues of man and distributed them quite decoratively and arbitrarily among the animals. The ant was an almost heraldic symbol of industry, as the lion was of courage, or, for the matter of that, the pelican of charity. But if the mediaevals had been convinced that a lion was not courageous, they would have dropped the lion and kept the courage; if the pelican is not charitable, they would say, so much the worse for the pelican. The old moralists, ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton

... it was true. The outlawed, exiled Prince stood once more on the borders of Brabant, with an army of disciplined troops at his back. His banners bore patriotic inscriptions. "Pro Lege, Rege, Grege," was emblazoned upon some. A pelican tearing her breast to nourish her young with her life-blood was the pathetic emblem of others. It was his determination to force or entice the Duke of Alva into a general engagement. He was desirous to wipe out the disgrace ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... grows alone in a corn field south of Pelican Pouch, a glacial moraine south of Carlyle about six miles. It is the plumpest, thinnest shelled nut of northern variety, and above average size. Fair bearer to the best of my knowledge, but a severe hail storm and a season of severe walnut caterpillars ruined two years' ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-Fifth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association

... PELICAN, a bird, the effigy of which was used in the Middle Ages to symbolise charity; generally represented as wounding its breast to feed its young with its own blood, and which became the image of the Christ who shed His ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... which comes everywhere from the natural grouping of articles of daily use,—swords, belts, pistols, rifles, field-glasses, spurs, canteens, gauntlets,—while wreaths of gray moss above the windows, and a pelican's wing three feet long over the high mantel-piece, indicated more deliberate decoration. This, and the whole atmosphere of the place, spoke of the refining presence of agreeable women; and it was pleasant when they held their little court in the evening, and pleasant all day, with the different ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... on each plantation. The dark turgid waters—the distant fires, surrounded by clouds of white smoke ascending in winding columns to the skies—the stillness of the night, interrupted only by the occasional cry of the pelican or the crane, and the monotonous thumping of the steam-boat paddles, formed a strange combination; and had the days of witches and warlocks not long since passed away, one would have sworn that these gentry were performing ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall

... rails were down, But the riders lingered still — One had a parting word to say, And one had his pipe to fill. Then they mounted, one with a granted prayer, And one with a grief unguessed. "We are going," they said, as they rode away — "Where the pelican builds ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens

... undulating, and may be visited in boats up the river for some distance. The Desmoines, he adds, is about eighty yards wide where the Little Sioux river approaches it: it is shoaly, and one of its principal branches is called Cat river. Two miles beyond this river is a long island which we called Pelican island, from the numbers of that animal which were feeding on it: one of these being killed, we poured into his bag five gallons of water. An elk, too, was shot, and we had again to remark that snakes are rare in this part of the ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark

... held ready for a plunge. Then, as a fish is sighted underneath, down go head and neck in a quick dart, soon to be drawn up with the victim writhing between the tips of the mandibles. But the prey is not secured yet. On each pelican attends a number of predatory gulls, wheeling over it in flight, and watching its every movement with a foregone and well-studied intent. For as soon as the fish is brought up, they swoop at it from all points with wild screams and flapping wings; and as the pelican cannot swallow the fish without ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid

... The men caught a bird with feet like a gull; but they were convinced it was a river bird. Then singing land birds, as was fancied, hovered about as it darkened, but they disappeared before morning. Then a pelican was observed flying to the southwest, and as "these birds sleep on shore, and go to sea in the morning," the men encouraged themselves with the belief that they could not be far from land. The next day a ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: Explorers • Various

... and Privileges,' regarded, as Mr. Wyrrall tells us, writing in the year 1780, "as the Magna Charta of our miners and colliers," incontrovertibly proves that it belongs to this period. It was first printed by William Cooper, at the Pelican in Little Britain, 1687, from a manuscript copy preserved in the office of the Deputy Gaveller, to which a postscript is added, "written out of a parchmt. roll, now in ye hands of Richard Morse of Clowerwall, 7 June, 1673, by Tho: Davies." ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls

... common. Why I became a nine-days' wonder on returning to camp and relating my experience. We managed to get some fun out of camp life, and my health was good (about this time I was flourishing like the owl of the desert and the pelican of the wilderness). One thing we missed was books. The only books we had were our Testaments which I enjoyed reading very much, for I meant to read some of it every day. The Testament I had was presented ...
— The Twenty-fifth Regiment Connecticut Volunteers in the War of the Rebellion • George P. Bissell

... blend, Mingle, and so become a part of it,— Nor with aught else can our souls interknit So wingedly: when we combine therewith, Life's self is nourish'd by its proper pith, And we are nurtured like a pelican brood. Aye, so delicious is the unsating food, That men, who might have tower'd in the van Of all the congregated world, to fan And winnow from the coming step of time 820 All chaff of custom, wipe away all slime Left by men-slugs and human serpentry, ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats

... which he labored to cement. We drove to the race-course to see the review of troops. A flag was presented to the Washington Artillery by ladies. Senator Judah Benjamin made an impassioned speech. The banner was orange satin on one side, crimson silk on the other, the pelican and brood embroidered in pale green and gold. Silver crossed cannon surmounted it, orange-colored fringe surrounded it, and crimson tassels drooped from it. It was a brilliant, unreal scene; with military bands clashing triumphant music, elegant vehicles, high-stepping ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various

... he could come to some practical arrangement with his creditors. He accordingly went to Boulogne on a visit to the father of the young lady in question, and while he was there induced him to insure his life with the Pelican Company for 3000 pounds. As soon as the necessary formalities had been gone through and the policy executed, he dropped some crystals of strychnine into his coffee as they sat together one evening after dinner. He himself did not gain any monetary advantage ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde

... apartment faced the Park, but was on the ground floor because a vice-president of a bank, a black-broadcloth little pelican of a man, who stumped on a cane and had a pink tin roof ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst

... The Pelican is distinguished by its love for its young. As these begin to grow they strike at their parents' faces, and the parents strike back and kill them. Then the parents take pity, and on the third day the mother comes and opens her side and lets the blood ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman

... there is no difference of level between the water at the bow and the water at the stern. In the experiments on the steamer Pelican, the resistance was found to vary, as the 2.28th power of the velocity, but the deviation from the recognized law was imputed to a difference in the level of the water at ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne

... like the timber, too, are strange. Kangaroo and wallaby are as fond of grass as the sheep, and after a pelican's yawn there are few things funnier to witness than the career of an 'old man' kangaroo, with his harem after him, when the approach of a buggy disturbs the family at their afternoon meal. Away they go, the little ones cantering briskly, ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris

... the famous Zoo' With Bertie, and Nellie, and Dick, and Sue. And we feel quite ready to jump for glee When the wonderful birds and beasts we see. The pelican solemn with monster beak, And the plump little penguin round and sleek, Have set us laughing—Ha, ha! Ho! ho! And you'll laugh too, if you look below. To the monkey-house then we make our way, Where ...
— London Town • Felix Leigh

... November, 1577, the fleet sailed out of Plymouth Sound amid the salutes of the guns of the fort there. It consisted of five ships: the Pelican, of 100 tons, the flagship, commanded by Captain General Francis Drake; the Elizabeth, 80 tons, Captain John Winter; the Marigold, a barque of 30 tons, Captain John Thomas; the Swan, a flyboat of 50 tons, Captain ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty

... Edward Millington's place of business was 'at the Pelican in Duck Lane' in 1670; from Michaelmas, 1671, it was 'at the Bible in Little Britain' (see Arber's Term Catalogues, vol. i, pp. 31, 93). It was about 1680 that he turned auctioneer of books, though he did not wholly abandon publishing. 'There was usually as much Comedy in his ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various

... moose and two calves. No game laws north of 53 deg. Men rejoice over meat. Eight mission scows in fleet, which carry eight to ten tons each. Father Le Fevre says, except for whitefish, all northern missions would perish. At 2.15 stopped at Pelican Portage, at head of Pelican Rapids, 120 miles below the landing. Head winds yesterday, but favorable now. Two boats collided, and one damaged. Saw two dogs carrying packs—first pack-dogs I ever saw. Priest baptized an Indian ...
— Young Alaskans in the Far North • Emerson Hough

... heap of corpses, and there is no end of the bodies. There is no assuaging of the hurt; thy wound is grievous; all that hear the report of thee clap their hands over thee: for upon whom hath not thy wickedness passed continually?" And another prophet had uttered the curse: "The pelican and the porcupine shall lodge in the capitals thereof; their voice shall sound in the windows; desolation shall be in the thresholds; for he hath laid bare the cedar-work. This is the joyous city that ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord

... both his son and his niece. He thoroughly understood that it was his duty as a father and a guardian to start them well in the world, to do all that he could for their prosperity, to feed their wants with his money, as a pelican feeds her young with blood from her bosom. Had he known the hearts of each of them, could he have understood Marie's constancy, or the obstinate silent strength of his son's disposition, he would have let Adrian Urmand, with his business and his house at Basle, seek a wife in any other ...
— The Golden Lion of Granpere • Anthony Trollope

... Verd Islands to the coast of Brazil you see several different kinds of gulls, which, probably, are bred in the Island of St. Paul. Sometimes the large bird called the frigate pelican soars majestically over the vessel, and the tropic bird comes near enough to let you have a fair view of the long feathers in his tail. On the line, when it is calm, sharks of a tremendous size make their appearance. They are descried from the ship by means of the dorsal fin, ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton

... ever see such sausage " Isn't it salubrious " And see these other things, sir. Aren't they curious " I shouldn't wonder if they were alive. Turnips, sir? No, sir. I think they are Pharisees. I have seen a Pharisee look like a pelican, but I have never seen a Pharisee look like a turnip, so I think these turnips must be Pharisees, sir, Yes, they may be walrus. We're not sure. Anyhow, their angles are geometrically all wrong. Peter, ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane

... of these large valleys we saw two large white and black birds, more like pelicans than any other kind I am acquainted with; they had webbed feet, and the colour and form of their body resembled that of the pelican, but the head and beak were very different; after flying two or three times round our heads, well out of shot, so as to have a good peep at us, they flew away, and for the first and last time I ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey

... birch-bark canoe, with or without a comrade, and going forth on the lakes and rivers of the wilderness with plenty of powder and shot, to visit the native home of the wild-goose, the wild-duck, the pelican, ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne

... was an old man—an old man who had once been fat, but with age had grown lean again, so that now his skin was by odds too large for him. It lay on the back of his neck in folds. Under the chin he was pouched like a pelican and about the jowls was ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb

... is his greatest delight. I have to imitate the notes of birds, and he does it after me, showing memory in it. He knows at once stork, woodpecker, pigeon, duck, pelican, siskin, and swallow. The little verses I sing at the same time amuse him, e. g., "Zeislein, Zeislein, wo ist dein Haeuslein?" (Little siskin, where is your little house?); and he retains them when he hears them often. Russian words also ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer

... companionship to herself. But no woman does so desire in regard to those who are dear and near to her. A dependant, distant in blood, or a paid assistant, may find here and there a want of the true feminine sympathy; but in regard to a daughter, or one held as a daughter, it is never wanting. "As the pelican loveth her young do I love thee; and therefore will I give thee away in marriage to some one strong enough to hold thee, even though my heartstrings be torn asunder by the parting." Such is always the heart's declaration of the ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope

... time, the Bristol and Bath stage-coaches took two days for the trip to London. Madge doubtless would have slept a night or two at Bristol after her landing; and probably at the Pelican Inn at Speenhamland (opposite Newbury), the usual midway sleeping-place, at the end of the first day's ride. But bad weather may have hindered the journey, and required the passengers to pass more than one night as inn-guests ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens

... me not, my brother Edward's son, For that I was his father Edward's son. That blood already, like the pelican, Hast thou tapp'd out, and drunkenly carous'd: My brother Gloucester, plain well-meaning soul,— Whom fair befall in heaven 'mongst happy souls!— May be a precedent and witness good That thou respect'st not spilling ...
— The Tragedy of King Richard II • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]

... at the point where he knows the ford to be. Long-legged creatures they are, standing as on stilts, and full five feet high, snow-white in colour, all but their huge beaks, which are jet black, with a band of naked skin around their necks, and a sort of pouch like a pelican's, this being of a bright scarlet. For they are garzones soldados, or "soldier-cranes," so-called from their red throats bearing a fancied resemblance to the facings on the collar of a soldier's coat, in the uniform of the ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid

... coq de prairie, and its gigantic congener the "sage grouse," whirr up at intervals along the path. The waters have their denizens, in the grey Canada and white-fronted geese—ducks of numerous species—the stupid pelican and shy loon—gulls, cormorants, and the noble swan; while the groves of alamo ring with the music of numerous bright-winged songsters, scarcely ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid

... symbol of Faith resides in the eyrie of the left foot; in the hole of the right foot resides the melancholy sweetness of the turtle-doves; in the wound of the left hand the dove ensconces herself, the symbol of surrender, and in the cavity of the right hand reposes the pelican, the ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans

... Middle Ages "Bestiaries," works of the same sort, which were also very numerous and very popular. A number of commonplace sayings or beliefs, which have survived up to our day (the faithfulness of the dove, the fatherly love of the pelican), ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand

... birds, to the sons of heroes, to the porphyrion, the pelican, the spoon-bill, the redbreast, the grouse, the peacock, the horned-owl, the teal, the bittern, the heron, the stormy ...
— The Birds • Aristophanes

... become burning pitch. It shall not be quenched night nor day; the smoke thereof shall go up for ever: from generation to generation it shall lie waste; none shall pass through it for ever and ever. But the pelican and the porcupine shall possess it; and the owl and the raven shall dwell therein: and he shall stretch over it the line of confusion, and the plummet of emptiness. They shall call the nobles thereof to the kingdom, but none shall be ...
— Select Masterpieces of Biblical Literature • Various

... of the Rhone, there are, so men say, desolate marshes, tenanted by herds of half-wild horses; foul mud- banks, haunted by the pelican and the flamingo, and waders from the African shore; a region half land, half water, where dwell savage folk, decimated by fever and ague. But short of those Bouches du Rhone, the railway turns to the north, toward ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley

... stood in each of the warden's eyes as he looked round upon his married daughter. Why should one sister who was so rich predict poverty for another? Some such idea as this was on his mind, but he gave no utterance to it. Then he thought of the pelican feeding its young with blood from its own breast, but he gave no utterance to that either; and then of Eleanor waiting for him at home, waiting to congratulate him on the end ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope

... Meleese Cummins and her home in the wilderness, one must start at Le Pas as the last outpost of civilization and strike northward through the long Pelican Lake waterways to Reindeer Lake. Nearly forty miles up the east shore of the lake, the adventurer will come to the mouth of the Gray Loon—narrow and silent stream that winds under overhanging forests—and after ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood

... If a native desires to state that a fish was swallowed by a pelican, he would say, "A pelican swallowed ...
— The Gundungurra Language • R. H. Mathews

... Bird Reservations distributed in seventeen States and Territories from Porto Rico to Hawaii and Alaska. The creation of these reservations at once placed the United States in the front rank in the world work of bird protection. Among these reservations are the celebrated Pelican Island rookery in Indian River, Florida; the Mosquito Inlet Reservation, Florida, the northernmost home of the manatee; the extensive marshes bordering Klamath and Malhuer Lakes in Oregon, formerly the scene of slaughter of ducks for market and ruthless ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... enough to distance the Follow Me, although that boat held on gamely all the way across the bay and only slowed down when, a good quarter of a mile behind the Adventurer, she was abreast Pelican Bar. The Adventurer dropped her gait to twelve and presently the black cruiser, having negotiated the inlet in the wake of the other craft, drew within hailing distance and Harry Corwin called ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour

... place, but over a space of many square yards of surface,—which appeared to be also agitated by the exertions of some creature underneath; the bird all the while repeating its cries, and beating the water into froth, like a huge pelican at play! ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid

... labor to hasten the coming of that day. The morals of antiquity, of the law of Moses and of Christianity, are ours. We recognize every teacher of Morality, every Reformer, as a brother in this great work. The Eagle is to us the symbol of Liberty, the Compasses of Equality, the Pelican of Humanity, and our order of Fraternity. Laboring for these, with Faith, Hope, and Charity as our armor, we will wait with patience for the final triumph of Good and the complete manifestation ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... systematic "Sweater," who sucks wealth From toiling crowds by cunning and by stealth,— He is all right, he has no maudlin twist, He does not shock the Individualist! But rate yourselves to give the poor free reading? The Pelican to warm her nestlings bleeding, Was no such monument of feeble folly. Let folks alone, and all will then be jolly. Let the poor perish, let the ignorant sink, The tempted tumble, and the drunkard ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 24, 1891 • Various

... incidents. My memory, so clear and vivid about earlier solitary times, now in all this society becomes blurred and vague. I recollect certain pleasures; being taken, for instance, to a menagerie, and having a practical joke, in the worst taste, played upon me by the pelican. One of my cousins, who was a medical student, showed me a pistol, and helped me to fire it; he smoked a pipe, and I was oddly conscious that both the firearm and the tobacco were definitely hostile to my 'dedication'. My girl-cousins took turns in putting me to bed, and on cold nights, ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse

... death, as from many a later shipwreck I painfully rescued myself and with painful struggles recovered my health of mind." At a still later date (1824) Goethe expressed himself with equal emphasis to the same purport. "That is a creation (Werther)," he told Eckermann, "which I, like the pelican, fed with the blood of my own heart. There is in it so much that was deepest in my own experience, so much of my own thoughts and sensations, that, in truth, a romance extending to ten such volumes might be made out of it. Since its appearance, I have read it only once, and have refrained ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown

... voice showed his genuine anxiety. "The Coon's match does not commence until eleven o'clock at night, because an awful lot of the Universal Sporters are actors and they cannot get away before that time at earliest. Now, there are two entrances for the members into the club, one in Pelican Street and the other in Ridge Street. Raffles must enter by one or the other, and there must be some one at each doorway to give him my note. I can take the one, and the question is—who will ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson

... the first was this, that she would never smile upon the girl again till this baseness should have been abandoned. She loved her girl as only mothers do love. More devoted than the pelican, she would have given her heart's blood,—had given all her life,—not only to nurture, but to aggrandize her child. The establishment of her own position, her own honour, her own name, was to her but the incidental result of her daughter's emblazonment in the world. The child which she had borne ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope

... a confusion in the mind of Priscilla between a pelican and a toucan, because she saw them both for the first time on the same day. In this case it consisted of an indigo splodge and a long red bar cutting right through the brown wind and penetrating deeply into ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 7th, 1920 • Various

... natives. Vocabulary of their language. Observations thereon in comparing it with Captain Cook's account. Mr. Cunningham visits Mount Cook. Leave Endeavour River, and visit Lizard Island. Cape Flinders and Pelican Island. Entangled in the reefs. Haggerston's Island, Sunday Island, and Cairncross Island. Cutter springs a leak. Pass round Cape York. Endeavour Strait. Anchor under Booby Island. Remarks upon the Inner and Outer routes ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King

... the Mississippi. They further declared, that the cotton and sugar plantations of West Louisiana offered great attractions, and were worthy the attention of Northern men. The passage of these resolutions indicates a better spirit than has been manifested by the inhabitants of other portions of the Pelican State. Many of the people in the Red River region profess to have been loyal to the United States throughout ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox

... thus wide Ile ope my Armes: And like the kinde Life-rend'ring Politician,[4] [Sidenote: life-rendring Pelican,] ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald

... discriminating and appreciative Providence. There is, for instance, or was until lately, one house which some hundred and fifteen years ago was the suburban residence of the old sea-captain governor, Kerlerec. It stands up among the oranges as silent and gray as a pelican, and, so far as we know, has never had one cypress plank added or subtracted since its master was called to France and thrown into the Bastile. Another has two dormer windows looking out westward, and, ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable

... to the point and took one more look, a searching, lingering look across the green water. Nowhere was the Whim, nowhere even a speck of sail or any other craft. Except for a pelican of sober mien, rising and falling with the waves, the Gulf seemed barren of any life. But something told me that the ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris

... Copas sweetly, turning over his portion of roast duck and searching for some flesh on it, "is not a duck at all, but a pelican, bird of wrath. See, it has ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... left the other rooms as they were, and pretended that we liked sitting on crimson satin chairs with gold legs. Father is lost without his nice gunny, sporty sanctum. Mother looks pathetically out of place in the bald, ugly rooms, and I feel a pelican in the wilderness without my belongings but when you have come through great big troubles you are ashamed to fuss over little ...
— The Heart of Una Sackville • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... kangaroo, opossum, goanna, emu, native companion, cockatoo, swallow, pelican, parrot, eagle, fish, brown-snake, deadly-black-snake, ...
— gurre kamilaroi - Kamilaroi Sayings (1856) • William Ridley

... purse and unfolded a ten-piastre note. I took no notice. He shook it for me to see, and I awoke like a pelican ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy

... Ocean;" in 1806, "The Wanderer in Switzerland;" in 1808, "The West Indies;" and in 1812, "The World before the Flood." In 1819 he published "Greenland, a Poem, in Five Cantos;" and in 1825 appeared "The Pelican Island, and other Poems." Of all those productions, "The Wanderer in Switzerland" attained the widest circulation; and, notwithstanding an unfavourable and injudicious criticism in the Edinburgh Review, at once ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various

... in proportion to its length, and is said to seat 2,000 people easily. The reredos, a handsome piece of wood carving with a central group of the pelican in her piety, typical of Christ giving His life's blood for fainting souls, is the work of Grinling Gibbons. The organ, in the western gallery, is supposed to have been the work of Bernard Schmidt and was built for the Roman Catholic Oratory at Whitehall, ...
— The Strand District - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant

... digging its talons into the soil, before it could raise itself into the air. M. Mouillard, of Cairo, spent more than thirty years in watching the flight of soaring birds, and devoted the whole of his book, L'Empire de l'Air (1881), to the investigation of soaring flight. The pelican, the turkey-buzzard, the vulture, the condor, have all had their students and disciples. M. Mouillard, indeed, maintains that if there be a moderate wind, a bird can remain a whole day soaring in the air, with no expenditure of power whatever. To those who have watched ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh

... building, is paved with white marble. In the center of the floor the Stewart arms are enameled in brass, showing a shield with a white and blue check, supported by the figures of a wild Briton and a lion. The crest is a pelican feeding its young, and the motto is "Prudentia et Constantia." These heraldic figures are made a special feature of the main aisle. Directly in the center of the auditorium floor the Stewart and Clinch arms are impaled, enameled in brass. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various

... friend, my friend, thou who wouldst have fed thy young ones, like the pelican, with blood from thine own breast, had such feeding been of avail; thou who art the kindest of mothers; has it been well for thee to subject to such perils this poor weak ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope

... Pelican.—"Full of living, breathing, human interest. Few writers possess the gift of bringing actual existence to their characters as does Mr Scott, and in the pages of his newest book you shall find tears ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt

... catch a crab, from which Columbus infers that they cannot be more than eighty leagues distant from land. The 18th, they see many birds, and a cloud in the distance; and that night they expect to see land. On the 19th, in the morning, comes a pelican (a bird not usually seen twenty leagues from the coast); in the evening, another; also drizzling rain without wind, a certain sign, as the diary ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps

... used for the affection of parents to children; which was also visibly represented by the Stork or Pelican feeding her young with blood taken from her own wounded bosom. A number of Pelicans form a semicircle in shallow parts of the sea near the coast, standing on their long legs; and thus including a shoal of small ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin

... Seville in April, and so fragrant that it was delicious to breathe it. The weeds appeared very fresh. Many land birds, one of which they took, flying towards the southwest, also grajaos, ducks and a pelican were seen." ...
— The Life of Christopher Columbus from his own Letters and Journals • Edward Everett Hale

... largest the Pelican, of one hundred tons burden, the smallest a pinnace of fifteen tons, manned in all with only 164 men, Drake sailed from Plymouth, November 15, 1577, to visit seas where no English vessel had ever sailed. Without serious loss, or adventure worthy of notice, the fleet ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various

... mantle of this figure are of a deep red, the latter being fastened over the breast by a clasp, and falling down in ample folds over the feet. Behind, as high as the head, is a hanging of green tapestry which is ornamented with a golden pelican—a symbol of the Redeemer. Behind the head the ground is gold, and on it in a semicircle are three inscriptions describing the Trinity as almighty, all-good, and all-bountiful. The figures of S. John and of the Virgin display equal majesty; both are reading holy books, as they turn ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies

... young elephant, with his tusks just appearing.—The brown bear put out his paws;—all very tame.—The lion.—The tigers I did not well view.—The camel, or dromedary with two bunches called the Huguin[1188], taller than any horse.—Two camels with one bunch.—Among the birds was a pelican, who being let out, went to a fountain, and swam about to catch fish. His feet well webbed: he dipped his head, and turned his long bill sidewise. He caught two or three fish, but did ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... I find interesting records of imitative dancing. One dance imitates the swimming movements of the large lizard (Varanus), another is an imitation of the movements of a crab, another imitates those of a pigeon, and another those of a pelican. At a dance which I witnessed in the Roro village of Seria a party from Delena danced the "Cassowary" dance; and Father Egedi says it is certainly so called because its movements are in some way an imitation of those of ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson

... of Paskwaya Indians, which consisted of thirty families, who were lodged in tents of a circular form, composed of dressed bison skins stretched upon poles twelve feet in length. On their arrival the chief of this village, named Chatik, which name meant Pelican,[13] called the party rather imperiously into his lodge or meeting house, and then told them very plainly that his armed men exceeded theirs in number, and that he would put the whole of the party to death unless they were very liberal in their presents. ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston

... the pelican's tail. Going to make a pen of it to use when I write to the folks at Edmeston," answered ...
— The Circus Boys Across The Continent • Edgar B. P. Darlington

... within easy walking distance of Ollerton, surpasses in interest and beauty the other great houses of the neighbourhood. The view from the pelican-crowned gateway, with its avenue of limes (some of which are considered the finest in all England) and beeches and elms, terminating in a glimpse of the facade of reddish stone, reminds one of the palace of the Sleeping Beauty in the days before briers and brambles barred the way. Separated ...
— The Dukeries • R. Murray Gilchrist

... though the symbolism is based upon quite erroneous notions concerning natural history, and is so far fantastic, it is not devoid of charm. The use of the pelican to symbolise the Saviour is a case in point. Legend tells us that when other food is unobtainable, the pelican thrusts its bill into its breast (whence the red colour of the bill) and feeds its young with its life-blood. ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove

... seafowl never a word, though one sees them in abundance on the coast near Jaffa, and the Hebrew writers might have been expected to weave them into the rich fabrics of their poetic imagery as they did the pelican, the eagle and other birds less familiar. Although seagulls have of late years been increasingly in evidence beside the bridges of London, they are still, to the majority of folk living far inland, symbolical of the August holiday at the coast, and their ...
— Birds in the Calendar • Frederick G. Aflalo

... are the eagle, the turkey-buzzard, the hawk, pelican, heron, gull, cormorant, crane, swan, and a great variety of wild ducks and geese. The pigeon, woodcock, and pheasant, are found in the forests as ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere

... days they withered like rootless things, And the sands rolled on, rolled wide; Like a pelican I, with broken wings, Like a drifting barque on ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... I had looked on with the unselfishness of a pelican, to see others eat candy; but now I strove with them, like a frigate bird, and made them give up some of it. ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman

... starting out with a frigate and starting home with a fleet, all taken by himself during a cruise unsurpassed for skill, daring and success, Master-Commandant William Henry Allen, of the American brig Argus, lost his life and his vessel in battle with the British brig Pelican. The defeat of the Argus is believed to have been caused by the use of defective powder, which had been taken from on board a prize, and which did not give the cannon shot force enough to do serious damage to the enemy. ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann

... Elizabeth's time were some of the bravest and most skilful that ever lived. Sir Francis Drake sailed round the world in the good ship Pelican, and when he brought her into the Thames the queen went to look at her. Sir Walter Raleigh was another great sailor, and a most courtly gentleman besides. He took out the first English settlers to North America, and named their new home Virginia—after the virgin queen—and ...
— Young Folks' History of England • Charlotte M. Yonge

... the dead of years were washed from their graves and carried across to the mainland. A tramp steamer was carried over to Virginia Point, then sent like a shot through three bridges. The steamers "Alamo" and "Red Cross" were dropped upon Pelican Flats, and when the waves retreated were left high and dry upon the sand. Yachts and sailboats were driven over the mainland and could be seen in the grass far beyond Texas City. Railroad cars loaded and empty were carried into the bay, ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall

... sublimations, cementations, distillations, rectifications, circulations, putrefactions, conjunctions, calcinations, incinerations, mortifications, revivifications, as also their tripods, athanors, reverberatory alembics, excrements of horses, ashes, sand, stills, pelican-viols, retorts, fixations, etc., are mere plausible ...
— The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry • M. M. Pattison Muir

... my foolish heart be pined 'Cause I see a woman kind; Or a well-disposed nature Joined with a lovely feature? Be she meeker, kinder, than Turtle-dove or pelican, If she be not so to me, What care I how kind ...
— Tudor and Stuart Love Songs • Various

... Bud soothingly, for the boy was very nervous from being up all night and his hard ride, which would have taxed the energies of a grown man. "Don't yer mind what thet ole pelican says. He ain't got no more sense than a last ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor

... the mouthpiece and vicegerent of Anne, your wife, who is in sore affliction and deep grief by reason of your transgressions. But, beloved lamb of my flock, I should be unworthy my high and sacred calling did I not lift up also my rebuking voice as a pelican in the wilderness, and adjure you to beware of concupiscence and fleshly lust, which unceasingly do war upon the human soul. Thinkest thou to touch pitch ...
— Shakespeare's Insomnia, And the Causes Thereof • Franklin H. Head

... of insensibility was passing away, and they were now in a gentle doze, and sleeping, thinking of the company they were to entertain. For these Cormorants had come to this spot to meet their cousin the Pelican to consult with him on some family matters. Upon their first arrival at the place they had set to work to get together a good supply of fish, for this is the only food of both the Cormorant and the Pelican. In a short time they landed a ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton

... even during noon by thin groves of towering trees. At our approach fled in terror flocks of green pigeons, jays, ibis, turtledoves, golden pheasants, quails and moorhens, with crows and hawks, while now and then a solitary pelican winged its way to ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley

... eyrie on Elbrus or Kasbek; the rapacious vulture watches from the high overhanging points of rock the lower woods and pastures; the melancholy owl hoots through the night around the hamlets; and by the side of the lowly mountain tarn stands silent and solitary the pelican of the wilderness. Only the wild turkey in the pinetree's top is a mark for the rifle; or the pheasant, darting up out of the path into the overhanging branches, tempts occasionally the sharpshooter; while, on the contrary, woodcock ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie

... their own language, being difficult to pronounce and remember, they are called by any names which the captains or crews may choose to give them. Some are called after the vessel they are in; others by common names, as Jack, Tom, Bill; and some have fancy names, as Ban-yan, Fore-top, Rope-yarn, Pelican, etc., etc. Of the four who worked at our house one was named "Mr. Bingham," after the missionary at Oahu; another, Hope, after a vessel that he had been in; a third, Tom Davis, the name of his ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana

... When we boarded the Pelican, which, by the way, is an old British cruiser, we were received by Mr. Peter McKenzie, from Montreal, who has superintendence of eastern posts, and Captain Lovegrow, who commanded the vessel. They told us that they had called at Rigolet on their way north and there ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace

... our return to Podgorica ourselves, and got back within five hours, shooting a fine pelican on the way, which was the last shot that we fired ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon

... lacked this saving accompaniment. And, accordingly, no sooner had their steeds begun to tread heath and green sward, and Gabriel Kettledrummle had again raised his voice with, "Also I uplift my voice like that of a pelican ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... toes, rounded, and unprovided with claws. These animals were all herbivorous. Amongst an immense number of others are found many new reptiles, some of them adapted for fresh water; species of birds allied to the sea-lark, curlew, quail, buzzard, owl, and pelican; species allied to the dormouse and squirrel; also the opossum and racoon; and species allied to the genette, ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers

... represented alive, and treated with great truthfulness and picturesque feeling. Among his best pictures are 'The Floating Feather,' a feather given with singular lightness drifting in a pool, with different birds on the water and the shore—a pelican prominent—in Amsterdam Museum, and 'A Hen defending her Chickens against the attacks of a Pea-hen, with a Peacock, a Pigeon, a Cassowary, and a ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler

... the cries of a number of mechanical animals, monkeys, wolves and boars, while a whale 60 feet long moved around the hall together with elephants, amid thirty large trees, a fountain of crystal and a pelican "spouting hippocras from his beak." The fact is that the situation in the Netherlands, in the second half of the fifteenth century, was very much the same as that in Florence at the same time, the people being swayed between an exuberant ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts

... get in another pay day before I start the high an' mighty, Bart. But I'll speak to the old man about them eggs. They taste like they'd been laid by a pelican before the Civil War. Somehow I can't eat an egg ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne

... of February, 1861, the "Pelican Flag" was flying over the Custom-House, Mint, City Hall, and everywhere in Louisiana. At the New Orleans levees ships carried every flag on earth except that of the United States. The only officer of the army there at the time ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer

... flowing lines and curves, broad sheets of clear plastic, animated signs, the grass and flowerbeds of a small park, people walking swiftly or idly. The huge gyro-stabilized bulk did not move noticeably to the long Pacific swell. Pelican Station was the colony's "downtown," its shops and theaters and restaurants, service ...
— The Sensitive Man • Poul William Anderson

... other hoteliers. They may be quite nice, of course, but then, again, they may not. I feel rather mean sometimes when I see a new arrival looking with big eyes at our merry table. Theoretically, I think one ought to be nice to new-comers in an hotel. It's such a pelican-in-the-wilderness feeling. I'd hate it myself, but practically I'm afraid I'm not particularly friendly. We are so complete that we don't want outsiders. They'd spoil the fun. Don't you think one is justified in being a little bit ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... wanted to get out of town before the Fourth. As the time drew near, Martha began to pack father's trunk as well as her own, and brush in and out of his room till he had no rest for the sole of his foot, and seemed as forlorn as a pelican in the wilderness. ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss

... has a masque. It may be an owl's head with mother-of-pearl eyes, or a wooden pelican's beak, or a wolf's head. It may be a wooden animal's face, which can be pulled apart by a string, and reveal under it an effigy of a human face, the first masque changing into great ears. The museum at Ottawa, Canada, contains a great number of such masques, and some missionaries in the ...
— The Log School-House on the Columbia • Hezekiah Butterworth

... else, a sailor. The easiest route to Hudson Bay was by way of the sea. More than once after his first experience he led to the Bay a naval expedition. His exploits are still remembered with pride in French naval annals. In 1697 he sailed the Pelican through the ice-floes of Hudson Straits. He was attacked by three English merchantmen, with one hundred and twenty guns against his forty-four. One of the English ships escaped, one Iberville sank with all on board, one he captured. That autumn the hardy corsair was in France ...
— The Conquest of New France - A Chronicle of the Colonial Wars, Volume 10 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • George M. Wrong

... fish are in shallow water; from this they sweep them with a sort of dredge of branches, which they drag through the pools on to the banks; the water runs back through the sticks, leaving the fish high and dry on the sand. The pelican is considered a great delicacy amongst the natives, and every day deputations waited upon us, asking us to shoot the "Coyas" for them, which of course we were very glad to do. They did not repay ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie

... well-marked by bold lofty banks. I remarked the salt-bush of the Bogan plains, growing here, on sand-islands of this river. The grass surpassed any I had ever seen in the colony in quality and abundance. The slow flying pelican appeared over our heads, and we came to a long broad reach covered with ducks, where the channel had all the appearance of a river of the first magnitude. The old mussle shells (UNIO) lay in heaps, like cart-loads, all along the banks, but still we saw none of the natives. ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell

... the net, mean matrimony, I suppose—But is it a crime in me to wish to marry her? Would any other woman think it so? and choose to become a pelican in the wilderness, or a lonely sparrow on the house-top, rather than have a mate that would chirp about her all ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson

... of course some one had to try and kill it; but luckily the criminal was an average shot only. The pelican flew off flapping its broad white wings. The Frenchman told us that the Turkish lady round the corner is a gipsy bride to be. A light dawned upon us. The bed, these boxes we were sitting upon: she was taking her furniture with her. Jan peered round at her. She was sitting on a low stool, ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon

... by itself stands a princely fisher whose bill is no modification, but an original invention and a marvellous one. Larger than a swan and gluttonous withal, the pelican cannot live on single fishes. It has given up angling altogether and taken to netting; and the way in which the net has been constructed out of the pair of forceps provided in the original plan of its ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)

... immediately a firm track, soon arrived at some Indian lodges to which it led. The inhabitants were Crees belonging to the posts on the Saskatchewan from whence they had come to hunt beaver. We made but a short stay and proceeded through a swamp to Pelican Lake. Our view to the right was bounded by a range of lofty hills which extended for several miles in a north and south direction which, it may be remarked, was that of all the hilly land we had ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin

... "Since we have begun the study of the flight of large and small birds one simple idea has prevailed—to imitate nature, which never makes mistakes. Between the albatross, which gives hardly ten beats of the wing per minute, between the pelican, ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne

... custom, to inspect the ship in question and her crew, accompanied by the then Minister for Marine Affairs, a gallant officer who shall be nameless, but who was better fitted for giving words of command than for extemporising speeches. Once on board the... Pelican (I will use that name, though it is not the real one), and the inspection of the crew being over, the King told the minister he desired to commemorate his visit by the bestowal of at least one Cross of Honour. The idea was quite unexpected, but after some consideration it was ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville

... the liquid waterproof black drawing inks (Chin-chin, Pelican, etc.). This is prepared for ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre

... as we stood on the high ground, we observed a pelican on the margin of the shallow pool gorging himself; our people went towards him, and raised a cry of 'Fish, fish!' We hurried down, and found numbers of fish struggling upward through the grass, in the rills formed by the trickling of the rain. There was scarcely water to cover them, but nevertheless ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... grocery. providing &c v.; purveyance; reinforcement, reenforcement^; commissariat. provender &c (food) 298; ensilage; viaticum. caterer, purveyor, commissary, quartermaster, manciple^, feeder, batman, victualer, grocer, comprador [Sp.], restaurateur; jackal, pelican; sutler &c (merchant) 797 [Obs.]. grocery shop, grocery store. V. provide; make provision, make due provision for; lay in, lay in a stock, lay in a store. supply, suppeditate^; furnish; find, find one in; arm. cater, victual, provision, purvey, forage; beat up ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... and somewhat conservative town. Life there has its joys and sorrows and passions, its ambitions, and heart-burnings, to be sure; a most absorbing novel could be written about it, and the author need not go beyond the city limits or approach the state-house or the Pelican Hotel. The casual visitor in that capital leaves it with a sense of peace, the echo of church bells in his ear, and (if in winter) the impression of dazzling snow. Comedies do not necessarily require a wide stage, nor tragedies an amphitheatre ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill



Words linked to "Pelican" :   pelecaniform seabird, family Pelecanidae, Old world white pelican, Pelecanidae, Pelecanus onocrotalus, Pelecanus erythrorhynchos, Pelican State, pelican crossing, white pelican



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