Pelican (Hastings' Dictionary)

The word nxp ka’ath is usually derived from the root xip ké’=‘to vomit,’ corre- sponding with the Arab. kd’a. The kd’ath is ‘the vomiter.’ It was interdicted as food (Ly 1118, Dt 14). It inhabited the wilderness (Ps 102° "7 =‘ uninhabited place’), It is one of the creatures that were to be found in the ruins os Edom (Is 34") and Nineveh (Zeph 2").

Unfortu: nately the LXX gives us no help, but on the contrary confuses us by translating it at Lv 118 πελεκάν, Dt 14" καταράκτης (AV and RV in both ‘ pelican’), Is 34" ὄρνεα, Zeph 2% χαμαιλέων (AV both ‘ cormor- ant,’ AVm and RV ‘ pelican’), Ps 102° πελεκάν (AV and RV ‘pelican’). The weight of scholarship is in favour of ‘pelican,’ which suits the idea of an unclean bird, and is a bird of uninhabited places (wilderness).

As to its being in ruins, it could well inhabit the marshes near the site of Nineveh. As regards Edom, where there is little water, this bird typifies desolation, and the absence of man (see BITTERN). The pelican belongs to the order Steganopodes, family Pelicanide, to which the cormorant also belongs. Two species are found in Palestine and Syria — Pelecanus onicrotalus, L., the roseate or white pelican; and P. crispus, Brush, the Dal- matian pelican.

Both have white plumage, the former with a roseate tinge. The legs of the former are greenish-black, the poash yellow, and irides crimson; of the latter the legs and pouch are flesh colour, and irides greyish-white. They are 5-6 feet long from the tip of the bill to the end of the tail. The bill is from 16-18 inches long. Under the lower mandible is a pouch which will hold several gallons. In this pouch it stores food for itself and its young.

Pelicans are abundant in the swamps of the Jordan Valley and the Orontes, and seen frequently in other regions of Palestine and Syria. Their breeding-places are in the remotest parts of the swamps. The attitude of the pelican when at rest is singularly listless and melancholy. It leans its head against its breast and stands motionless until hunger compels it to activity.

It then flies 30-40 feet above the sur- face of the water, turns its head with one eye downwards, and, when it sees a fish sufficiently near the surface, swoops down upon it, and rarely fails to seize it. It immediately stores it away in its pouch, and proceeds to fish for more until its receptacle is full. It often fishes as far as twenty miles out at sea.

It then not ἘΠ ue retires inland to a lonely spot, and sits in the melancholy attitude above described until it has digested its enormous meal. This is the Psalmist’s sad ‘ pelican of the wilderness.’ The pelican is called Υ the Arabs ’abu jerdb=‘the father of a pouch,’ and haugal=‘a pouch,’ and in Egypt bega. G. E. Post.