62 ALLEN'S NATURALIST'S LIBRARY. 



feature is common to the two families. Just as the male 

 Hornbills feed their females in the nest, so, it would appear, 

 do the Hoopoes. It is true that the male does not plaster the 

 female in the tree, like the Hornbill does, but there is plenty 

 of evidence that the male Hoopoe brings all the food to the 

 female, though the latter occasionally comes out and takes a 

 flight before returning. 



The note of the Hoopoe, as observed in China by Swinhoe, 

 " is produced by puffing out the sides of the neck, and ham- 

 mering on the ground at the production of each note, thereby 

 exhausting the air at the end of the series of three notes, 

 which make up its song. Before it repeats the call, it repeats 

 the puffing of the neck with a slight gurgling noise, When it 

 is able to strike its bill, the sound is the correct hoo-hoo-hoo, 

 but when perched on a rope, and only jerking out the song 

 with nods of the head, the notes most resemble the syllables 

 hoh-hoh-hoh." 



Eggs. Four to seven in number ; grey or greenish-olive or 

 stone-colour, without spots. When first laid, they are of a pale 

 greenish-blue colour, which soon fades. Axis, 0-9-1-1 inch; 

 diam., 07. 



THE KINGFISHERS. SUB-ORDER HALCYONES. 



Birds of ungainly form but mostly of brilliant plumage, the 

 Kingfishers are found in nearly every part of the world. They 

 are most numerous in the Old World, as America possesses but 

 one genus, Ceryk, of which the Belted Kingfisher, Ceryle alcyon, 

 is the type, but the genus ranges throughout the New World, 

 from the high north even down to Chili. 



In the Old World there is scarcely a country that docs not 

 possess a Kingfisher of some sort or another, belonging to one of 

 the two types recognised in the Family, which is divided into 

 Fish-eating Kingfishers (Alccdinincs) and Insect- or Reptile- 

 eating Kingfishers (Dacelonina). The former have a long thin 

 bill, much compressed, fit for cleaving the water, and generally, 

 but not always, a short rudder-like tail. This is, indeed, by 

 no means an universal characteristic, and among the Insect- 



