File:American homes and gardens (1907) (14762008921).jpg

Identifier: americanhomesgar41907newy (find matches)
Title: American homes and gardens
Year: 1905 (1900s)
Authors:
Subjects: Architecture, Domestic Landscape gardening
Publisher: New York : Munn and Co
Contributing Library: Smithsonian Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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some time after a meal before the young pelican seems tofeel himself again. Young pelicans, after they arrive at suchsize as to be able to get about, do not restrict their clamor-ings for food to their own parents, but even levy on anypelican that happens to waddle along. The old birds, how-ever, always distinguish their own offspring, and when theselection is made, the other young pelicans make no attemptto disturb the feed-ing. In the white peli-can, the upper man-dible is adornedwith a thin, tri-angular, bony crest,composed of hornyfibers, and attachedto the cutaneous cov-ering of the bill, butnot to the bonystructure itself.These appendagesare worn only dur-i n g the breeding occasionally indulging in a grotesque dance. Such a habit isindulged in by some such birds as the sandhill crane at thebreeding season. However, the great blue heron has beenknown to indulge in family dances of this character in thefall, and such dances having obviously no pairing significance, PelicanDancing
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season, being afterward shed. As the birds are said to besomewhat quarrelsome during the breeding season, and asthese objects are possessed only by the males, it has beenthought that they are in the nature of weapons. Pelicans have an amusing, and rather obscure, habit of there seems no bet-ter reason to assignfor their indulgencethan that the birds,like their humanbrethren, find thisdiversion amusingand to their liking.The larger crea-tures of our countrypassed before theadvancement of civi-lization. Beforepeople realized thatthe immense herdsof buffalo thatranged the westernplains were destinedto extermination,they were gone, and there remained of them only small,tame-looking groups in the zoological parks, and the tradi-tions that linked them with the Indian and the cowboy. Our fathers tell us of the flocks of wild pigeons that dark-ened the sky, and broke down large branches in the woodswhere they roosted, yet to-day it is rarely, if ever, that one isseen. The great auks that once

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