Dixon Lanier Merritt
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Dixon Lanier Merritt (1879 - 1972) was a poet and humorist. He was a newspaper editor for the Tennessean, Nashville's morning paper, and President of the American Press Humorists Association, and penned this famous limerick in 1910, according to "http://www.saltgrassflats.com/birds/pelicans.html".
- A wonderful bird is the pelican,
- His bill will hold more than his belican,
- He can take in his beak
- Ennough food for a week
- But I'm darned if I know how the helican!
Dixon Merritt was also a chef in the army for quite some time, that is where he first started writing his limericks to cheer up the soldiers with a good laugh.
His limerick is quoted in a number of scholarly works on ornithology, including "Manual of Ornithology: Avian Structure and Function" by Noble S. Proctor and Patrick J. Lynch and several others.
Merritt was a founding member of the Tennessee Ornithological Society.
