202 THE KINGFISHER. 



No words can do justice to the Kingfisher ; and if you would 

 know what he really is, you must make your way cautiously to 

 some quiet stream overhung with bushes, where, on a projecting 

 bough, you may chance to see him as he sits motionless, shining 

 in the sun like a sapphire gem watching for his prey. Be still, 

 and in half a minute you will have proof of his skill as a fisherman. 

 See ! he darts from his station a line of bright green light, at the 

 end of it a splash in the water, and he is gone. But only for a 

 moment, for now he emerges from the stream, and in his bill is 

 a little fish, whose scales glisten in the sun for an instant, when 

 it is beaten to death against a stone and swallowed whole. 



In far less time than it has taken to describe, the fish is 

 caught and swallowed, and the bird is back to its station again, 

 where it sits and waits as before, till another plunge marks the 

 capture of another fish, for the Kingfisher rarely misses its prey, 

 and so on, till perhaps half a dozen are captured in little more 

 than as many minutes. 



It is somewhat strange, considering the high-flown descrip- 

 tion which the ancients have given of the Kingfisher's nest, that 

 it is still an undetermined question with naturalists whether the 

 bird really builds any nest at all. Its general habits are very 

 well known, but there is still a doubt as to its procedure in this 

 one particular. The question at issue, however, is a very narrow 

 one. It is well known that the birds rear their young in the 

 banks of the streams they haunt, either digging a hole them- 

 selves, or taking possession of that of a water-rat, which they 

 afterwards enlarge to suit their convenience. The direction of 

 the hole is always diagonally upwards, and it generally pene- 

 trates from two to three feet into the bank, the end being scooped 

 into a sort of hollow, at the bottom of which there is always a 

 quantity of small fish-bones mixed with earth, on which the 

 bird lays its beautiful transparent pinkish-white eggs. 



The point in dispute is, whether these bones are to be con- 

 sidered in the light of a ~bona fide "nest," or merely as a casual 

 accumulation cast up by the parent birds irrespective of any view 

 to nidification. 



Mr. Gould, who in his " Birds of Europe " advocates the latter 

 view, has recently communicated to the Zoological Society the 

 particulars of a discovery he has made, which leads him to 

 udopt the opposite opinion, namely, that the parent birds pur- 



