CEEYLE ALCYON. 47 



to their young. The miller told me that for 

 years the pair had nested in the same place, 

 and he would not permit me to explore it. 

 He went on to detail a number of reminis- 

 cences in which the birds figured picturesque- 

 ly; one I remember was to the effect that 

 a hawk had pursued the male kingfisher so 

 savagely, once upon a time, that the poor 

 fugitive had rushed into the mill and hidden 

 itself in the hollow of a grain-shaft. This 

 love of the miller for his birds struck me as 

 beautifully romantic, especially as the mill 

 was in a remote mountain " pocket" where 

 any thing to love was as hard to find as were 

 the deer in the pine thickets on the stony 

 foot-hills, and considering the fact that he 

 was an old sinner as tough in his fiber as the 

 oaken beams of his race-way. 



The kingfisher has inspired the genius of 

 poets, legend-makers, superstition -mongers, 

 and scientists all the way from Ovid down to 

 Mr. R. B. Sharpe of our own day, who has 

 published a brilliant and wonderful mono- 

 graph of the Alcedinidce, with many excel- 

 lent figures. M. Holland in his " Faune Pap- 

 ulaire da la France " relates a legend to the 

 effect that Alcyon, in leaving the ark, flew 

 straight toward the setting sun, and that his 

 back caught its blue from the sky above, and 

 his breast was scorched by the luminary be- 

 low to a brownish, clouded hue. Its head is 

 worn as a charm by savages and was conspic- 

 uous on a fetich string I saw in the possession 

 of a negro conjurer. Its dried body was once 

 thought able to ward off lightning and to in- 

 dicate the direction of the wind. But, no 

 matter what may be true of the European 

 and other foreign kingfishers, our Ceryle 

 Akyon is not gifted with any supra-aviqn 



