KINGFISHERS. 401 



in Cuba, saw a tody dig witli its hill. Two weel;s later he found the burrow finished. 

 It consisted of a horizontal tuiuiel about four inches long, ending in a nest-chamber 

 in which were dej)osited the \nn-(i wliite eggs. 



Like all the other Picarian families, the kingfishers, or ALCEDiNiDyE, form a very- 

 well circumscribed grouji, sei)aratc<l from all the others by gajis which future |iak'on- 

 tological discoveries may bridge. But now, since the internal structure of all these 

 forms has become better known, it has been possible, with some degree of certainty, 

 to decide ujjon the mutual relationships. It is interesting in this connection to 

 remark that various authors, looking from different points of view, some from 

 external others from internal characters, came to the same conclusion: viz., that 

 the kinglishers are most nearly allied to the hornbills, in s[)ite of the enormous sujier- 

 licial dissimilarity in structure, habits, and food. We shall return to this point later 

 in connection with the latter family. 



When, in 1871, Mr. R. B. !Sharpe finished his monograph of the present family, he 

 considered it to consist of one hundred and twenty-five siiecies. Since then, various 

 new species have been described, and altogether we may estimate the number of spe- 

 cies to be about one hundred and fifty, concerning the geographical distribution of which 

 Dr. Wallace remai-ks as follows : — 



'•The kingfishers are distributed universally, but very unequally, over the globe, and 

 in this respect present some of the most curious anomalies to be found among birds. 

 Tiiey have their metropolis in the eastern half of the Malay Archipelago, from Celebes 

 to New Guinea, in which district no less than thirteen out of the nineteen genera 

 occur, eight of them being peculiar; and it is probable that in no other equally varied 

 group of universal distribution is so large a proportion of the generic forms confined 

 to so limited a district. From this centre, kingfishers decrease rajiidly in every direc- 

 tion. In Australia itself there are only four genera with thirteen species ; the whole 

 Oriental region has only si.Y genei'a, one being peculiar ; the Ethiopian also six 

 genera, but three jK'culiar; and each of these has less than half the nund)er of spe- 

 cies possessed by the Australian region. The Palajarctic region possesses only three 

 genera, all derived from the Oriental region ; but the most extraordinary deficiency is 

 shown by the usually rich Neotropical region, which possesses but a single genus, 

 common to the larger part of the eastern hemisphere, and the same genus is alone 

 found in the Nearctic region, the onlj' difference being that the former possesses eight, 

 while the latter has but a single s])ecies. These facts almost inevitably lead to the 

 conclusion that America long existed without kingfishers ; and that in comjiaratively 

 recent times — perhaps dui'ing the miocene or jiliocene period — a species of the Old 

 World genus, Ceri/lc, found its way into North America, and, spreading rapidly south- 

 ward along the great river-valleys, has become differentiated in South America into the 

 few closely .allied forms that alone inhabit that vast country — the richest in the world 

 in fresh-water fish, and apj)arently the best fitted to sustain a varied and numerous 

 body of kingfishers." 



We have in our plate the representatives of the two sub-families into which the 

 kingfishers are divisible, viz., the common European kingfisher (Alcedo ispiJa), type 

 of the Alcedininw, characterized by the long scapular feathers forming a kind of 

 mantle covering the back, and the white-headed halcyon (IIalc>/o>i semiaerulea), one 

 of the Ilalcyonina;, in which the scajiulars arc short. To this latter grouji, which 

 embraces the omnivorous and re))lilivorous species, belong the giants of the family, 

 among others the giant kinghunter of Australia. The latter is now so popular a bird 

 VOL. IV. —26 



