CERYLE ALCYON. 37 



the knowledge which soon comes, that in- 

 strumental music is the bird's forte — he plays 

 on the water as on a dulcimer, bringing out 

 pure liquid notes (at long intervals, indeed) 

 too sweet and elusive to be fixed in any 

 written score. To watch Ceryle Alcyon 

 strike the silver strings of a summer brook 

 and set them to vibrating 4s worth the sacri- 

 fice of any leisure hour. It is the old touch 

 of Apollo, swift, sure, masterful, virile, and 

 yet tender as the very heart of nature. 

 ' ' Plash ! " A sudden gleam of silver, 

 amethyst, and royal purple, a whorl as of a 

 liquid bloom on the water, rings and dim- 

 ples and bubbles, and in the midst of it all, 

 the indescribable sound from the smitten 

 stream, its one chord rendered to perfection. 

 Nature sketched the kingfisher, in the first 

 place, with a certain humorous expression, 

 which still lurks in the overlarge crest and al- 

 most absurdly short legs ; but the bird itself is 

 always in earnest. It may look at times like 

 a bright, sharp exclamation point at the close 

 of some comic passage in the phenakism of 

 nature, but it is the very embodiment of 

 sincerity; in fact, the birds are all realists 

 of the prosiest kind. One might as well look 

 for something large and morally lifting in 

 a minutely analytical novel, as to expect a 

 bird to be sentimental. A worm — in the case 

 of the kingfisher a minnow— is the highest 

 object of avian ambition — the realist dotes on 

 one's motive in twisting one's thumbs — and or- 

 nithic life does not generate poetry. The 

 kingfisher knows his brook from source to 

 mouth, for he has conned it during countless 

 ages. Not that he has lived so long individ- 

 ually, the knowledge exists in heredity— the 

 transmitted sum of ten thousand ancestral 



