486 KINGFISHER 
it resorts to the sea-shore, but a severe winter is sure to Occasion a 
great mortality in the species, for many of its individuals seem 
unable to reach the tidal waters where only in such a season they 
could obtain sustenance; and to this cause rather than any other 
(though, on account of its beauty and the utility of its feathers in 
making artificial flies, it is shot and netted in great numbers) is 
perhaps to be ascribed its general scarcity. Very early in the year 
it prepares its nest, which is at the end of a tunnel bored by itself 
in a bank, and therein the six or eight white, glossy, translucent 
eggs are laid, sometimes on the bare soil, but often on the fish- 
bones which, being indigestible, are thrown up in pellets by the 
birds ; and, in any case, before incubation is completed these rejecta- 
menta accumulate so as to form a pretty cup-shaped structure that 
increases in bulk after the young are hatched, but, mixed with 
their fluid excretions and with decaying fishes brought for their 
support, soon becomes a dripping foetid mass. 
The Kingfisher is the subject of a variety of legends and super- 
stitions, both classical and medieval. Of the latter one of the 
most curious is that having been originally a plain grey bird it 
acquired its present bright colours by flying towards the sun on its 
liberation from Noah’s ark, when its upper surface assumed the hue 
of the sky above it and its lower plumage was scorched by the heat 
of the setting orb to the tint it now bears.1 More than this, the 
Kingfisher was supposed to possess many virtues. Its dried body 
would avert thunderbolts, and if kept in a wardrobe would preserve 
from moths the woollen stuffs therein laid, or hung by a thread to 
the ceiling of a chamber would point with its bill to the quarter 
whence the wind blew. All readers of Ovid (Metam. bk. xi.) know 
how the faithful but unfortunate Ceyx and Alcyone were changed 
into Kingfishers—birds which bred at the winter solstice, when 
through the influence of AXolus, the wind-god and father of the 
fond wife, all gales were hushed and the sea calmed so that their 
floating nest might ride uninjured over the waves during the seven 
proverbial ‘“‘Haleyon Days”; while a variant or further develop- 
ment of the fable assigned to the Halcyon itself the power of 
quelling storms.? 
The common Kingfisher of Europe is the representative of a 
well-marked Family of birds, the Alcedinide or Halcyonide of 
ornithologists, which is considered by some authorities? to be 
closely related to the Bucerotidx (HORNBILL); but the affinity can 
scarcely be said as yet to be proved; and to the present writer 
1 Rolland, Faune populaire de la France, ii. p. 74. 
2 In many of the islands of the Pacific Ocean the prevalent Kingfisher is the 
object of much veneration. 
3 Cf. Eyton, Contrib. Orn. 1850, p. 80; Wallace, Ann. Nat. Hist. ser. 2, 
xviii. pp. 201, 205; and Huxley, Proc. Zool. Soc. 1867, p. 467. 
