CERYLE ALCYON. 



The kingfisher is a dash of bright blue in 

 every choice bit of brookside poetry or paint- 

 ing; he is a warm fragment of tropical life 

 and color, left over from the largess be- 

 stowed upon our frigid world by one of those 

 fervid periods of ancient creative force so 

 dear to the imagination, and so vaguely 

 limned on the pages of science. The bird, 

 by some fine law, keeps its artistic value fully 

 developed. You never see Alcyon out of 

 keeping with the environment; even when 

 going into the little dark hole in the earth, 

 where its nest is hidden, the flash of tur- 

 quoise light with which it disappears leaves a 

 sheen on the observer's memory as fascinat- 

 ing and evasive as some fleeting poetical al- 

 lusion. 



Ceryle Alcyon ! how sweet the name in the 

 midst of those jarring sounds invented by sci- 

 ence. Coming upon it in the catalogues is 

 like hearing a cultured voice in the midst of 

 a miner's broil, or like meeting a beautiful 

 child in a cabinet of fossils. Ceryle Alcyon 

 suggests sunshine, bright water, dreamy 

 skies, and that rich foliage growing near 

 streams — a foliage to which the adjective 

 lush clings like some rather ornamental cater- 

 pillar, with an underhint of classical afiinity 

 very tenuous and filmy. It is a disappoint- 

 ment to one's imagination at first to find out 

 that so beautiful a creature as the A Icyon can- 

 not sing ; but there is just compensation in 

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