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200 CURIOUS CREATURES.
fisher had another very useful trait. If a dead King-
fisher were hung up by a cord, it would point its beak
to the quarter whence the wind blew. Shakespeare
mentions this property in King Lear (ii. I) :
" Turn their halcyon beaks
With every gale and vary of their masters."
And Marlowe, in his Jew of Malta (i. i) :
" But now, how stands the wind ?
Into what corner peers my halcyon bill ? "
THE PELICAN.
The fable of the Pelican " in her piety, vulning
herself," as it is heraldically described is so well known,
as hardly to be worth
mentioning, even to
contradict it. In the
first place, the her-
aldic bird is as un-
like the real one, as
it is possible to be ;
but the legend seems
to have had its origin
in Egypt, where the
vulture was credited
with this extraordi-
nary behaviour, and this bird is decidedly more in
accordance with the heraldic ideal. Du Bartas, singing
of " Charitable birds," praises equally the Stork and the
Pelican :
The Stork, still eyeing her deer Thessalie,