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. Dixon Merritt also served as a chef in the army, where he first began writing his limericks to cheer up the soldiers.
He penned this well-known limerick in 1910:[1]
| “ | A wonderful bird is the pelican,
His bill will hold more than his belican,
But I'm darned if I know how the helican! |
” |
The limerick, often misattributed to Ogden Nash, 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.
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