For
his greater amusement he had brought together in the park a rare
and valuable collection of birds and beasts; amongst which were,
according to a quaint authority, "an onocratylus, or pelican, a
fowl between a stork and a swan--a melancholy water-fowl brought
from Astracan by the Russian ambassador." This writer tells us,
"It was diverting to see how the pelican would toss up and turn a
flat fish, plaice or flounder, to get it right into its gullet at
its lower beak, which being filmy stretches to a prodigious
wideness when it devours a great fish. Here was also a small
water-fowl, not bigger than a more-hen, that went almost quite
erect like the penguin of America. It would eate as much fish as
its whole body weighed, yet ye body did not appear to swell the
bigger. The Solan geese here are also great devourers, and are
said soon to exhaust all ye fish in a pond. Here was a curious
sort of poultry not much exceeding the size of a tame pidgeon,
with legs so short as their crops seemed to touch ye earth; a
milk-white raven; a stork which was a rarity at this season,
seeing he was loose and could fly loftily; two Balearian cranes,
one of which having had one of his leggs broken, and cut off
above the knee, had a wooden or boxen leg and thigh, with a
joint so accurately made that ye creature could walke and use it
as well as if it had ben natural; it was made by a souldier. The
park was at this time stored with numerous flocks of severall
sorts of ordinary and extraordinary wild fowle breeding about the
decoy, which, looking neere so greate a citty, and among such a
concourse of souldiers and people, is a singular and diverting
thing.
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