232 HALCYON1DJE. 



become so tame that they even venture within a few feet 

 of the door of Bathgate Mill, which is situate in the im- 

 mediate vicinity of houses ; and I have recently received 

 a communication from a gentleman in Somersetshire, 

 who has been in the habit for years of feeding birds 

 close to his parlour window in hard weather, that during 

 the severe part of the spring of 1854, and again in 1855, 

 a female Kingfisher was observed occasionally among the 

 more constant visitors, partaking of mashed potatoes, 

 barley-meal, bread-crumbs, &c., along with Blackbirds, 

 Thrushes, Finches, Tits, and Robins, as much at home as 

 they were, and picking up her share with the rest. 



An account of the Kingfisher would be incomplete if 

 left without any reference to the powers attributed to this 

 bird by some of the older naturalists and poets ; and the 

 following brief notice is therefore condensed from the 

 pages of Pennant, and the more recently published obser- 

 vations of Mr. J. H. Fennell on Shakspeare's knowledge 

 of Natural History. 



It was formerly believed that during the time the 

 Halcyon or Kingfisher was engaged in hatching her eggs, 

 the water, in kindness to her, remained so smooth and calm, 

 that the mariner might venture on the sea with the happy 

 certainty of not being exposed to storms or tempests ; this 

 period was therefore called by Pliny and Aristotle the 

 Halcyon Days. It was even supposed that the Kingfisher 

 had power to quell the storm ; and, in reference to the 

 dangerous situation of the female when sitting in her 

 water-bound nest, Dryden, in his translation of Ovid's 

 Metamorphoses, has the lines 



" Her sire at length is kind, 



Calms every storm, and hushes every wind." 



Theocritus, a Greek pastoral poet, as translated by Fawkes, 

 has also the following line 



