and
those which dwell in the desert and eat only insects and worms. There is
a wonderful thing about the pelican, for never did mother-sheep love her
lamb as the pelican loves its young. When the young are born, the
parent bird devotes all his care and thought to nourishing them. But the
young birds are ungrateful, and when they have grown strong and
self-reliant they peck at their father's face, and he, enraged at their
wickedness, kills them all.

[Footnote 4: The reference here is probably to the 'Liber de Bestiis et
Aliis Rebus' of Hugo de St. Victor.]

On the third day the father comes to them, deeply moved with pity and
sorrow. With his beak he pierces his own side, until the blood flows
forth. With the blood he brings back life into the body of his young[5].

[Footnote 5: There are many allusions in literature to this story. Cf.
Shakespeare,--

"Like the kind life-rendering pelican,
Repast them with my blood."--'Hamlet,' iv. 5.

"Those pelican daughters."--Lear, iii. 4. Cf. also the beautiful metaphor
of Alfred de Musset, in his 'Nuit de Mai.']

THE EAGLE

The eagle is the king of birds. When it is old it becomes young again in
a very strange manner. When its eyes are darkened and its wings are
heavy with age, it seeks out a fountain clear and pure, where the water
bubbles up and shines in the clear sunlight. Above this fountain it
rises high up into the air, and fixes its eyes upon the light of the sun
and gazes upon it until the heat thereof sets on fire its eyes and
wings. Then it descends down into the fountain where the water is
clearest and brightest, and plunges and bathes three times, until it is
fresh and renewed and healed of its old age[6].

[Footnote 6: "Bated like eagles having lately bathed."--'I Henry IV.,'
iv. I.]

The eagle has such keen vision, that if it is high up among the clouds,
soaring through the air, it sees the fish swimming beneath it, in river
or sea; then down it shoots upon the fish and seizes and drags it to the
shore. Again, if unknown to the eagle its eggs should be changed and
others put into its nest,--when the young are grown, before they fly
away, it carries them up into the air when the sun is shining its
brightest. Those which can look at the rays of the sun, without
blinking, it loves and holds dear; those which cannot stand to look at
the light, it abandons, as base-born, nor troubles itself henceforth
concerning them[7].

[Footnote 7:
"Na