13 
KINGFISHER. 
KINGSFISHER. COMMON KINGFISHER 
COMMON KINGSFISHER. 
GLAS Y DORIAN, OF THE ANCIENT BRITISH. 
Alcedo ispida, LINN US, 
Ispida Senegalensis, Brisson. 
Gracula Atthis, GMELIN. LATHAM 
Alcedo—-A Kingfisher. Ispida (or, properly, Hispida,)— 
Rough, as with wet. 
A coop figure of the Kingfisher was stated a few years 
since to be still a ‘desideratum.’ The accompanying plate, 
from a design by my friend, the Rev. R. P. Alington, supplies 
the want, and leaves nothing to be yet desired. I fearlessly 
assert it to be the best ever yet produced. 
My ‘random recollections’ of the Kingfisher are associated 
with my school days—‘haleyon days’ indeed—when so gay a 
bird was an especial mark for our guns, a prize to figure in 
the drawing books in which the ‘exuviz’ of our excursions 
were arranged. The next of the ‘seven stages’ saw me on 
the banks of the stream in Berkshire, already alluded to when 
speaking of the Merlin, following up a more congenial pursuit 
than the ostensible one of ‘reading with a private tutor.’ 
Standing on a little wooden bridge, ‘in utrumque paratus,’ 
a flying or a sitting shot, the often admired Kingfisher 
glittered up the brook, and, alas! though the first that I had 
ever obtained a shot at, fell into the water, and was soon 
floated down to where I stood. A fortnight afterwards, at 
the very same spot, almost literally ‘stans pede in uno,’ the 
same thing happened again. A third, years afterwards, un- 
fortunately flew in front of a boat in which I was rowing 
my brother, whose gun came but too readily to my hand. 
