86 Eev. H. B, Tristram on the Ornithology of Palestine. 



any fish-bones with the eggs, though, when there were young, 

 there was a festering heap of bones and decaying tilth. But 

 there was always an abundantly heaped nest of grass and weeds. 

 In one nest, which had been visited and robbed by Mr. Bartlett, 

 there was a family of three unfledged young ; so that the bird 

 must have laid again almost immediately in the same digging. 

 The whole colony sat about on the oleanders, or passed and re- 

 passed incessantly, during my operations, screaming and shriek- 

 ing at the intruder most vociferously. The eggs of this species 

 vary in shape more than those of any other Kingfisher with which 

 I am acquainted. Though generally almost spherical, those of 

 two nests we captured were decidedly elongated, in one case 

 much more so than in the other ; and the peculiarity was com- 

 mon to the whole sitting in each case. Some confusion has 

 arisen in the nomenclature of this bird, from Swainson, in his 

 'Birdsof West Africa^ (vol.ii. p. 95), having described the male bird 

 as distinct, under the name oi Ispida bicincta. The fact is, that 

 the adult male always has i\iesecond narrow belt of black across the 

 chest. Degland, on the contrary, attributes this second belt to 

 the female. I preserved twenty -one specimens, and many were 

 collected by others of the party. In all, the sex was carefully 

 noted, and the rule held good of the male having a second 

 band, which was always wanting in the female and young bird. 

 The young, before its first moult, has many of the feathers on 

 the throat and breast, both above and below the band, delicately 

 tipped with a slaty-black crescent-shaped mark. The range of 

 Ceryle rudis is most extensive, from Western Africa and the 

 Cape of Good Hope to the furthest parts of China and Japan. 

 It is evidently the bird intended by Russell, in his ' Natural 

 History of Aleppo,' under the name of Alcedo alcyon, var. 7, 

 and was first described by Hasselquist. 



Halcyon smyrnensis, L., is also noted by Bussell in his ' Natural 

 History of Aleppo,' but for a century since his time it appears to 

 have eluded the observation of naturalists, until rediscovered by 

 Captain Graves and reported in an interesting paper by Mr. 

 Strickland (Ann. Nat. Hist. vol. ix. p. 441). It has been 

 imagined that the Indian bird, called by Boddaert H. fuscus, 

 was distinct; but Strickland has very clearly shown their 



