66 THE KING-FISHER 



prry for hours at the same spot, are surely enough to 

 account for it. When one's stomach is empty and one has 

 to kick one's heels till some problematic fish comes 

 into reach of one's bill, one is not inclined to be 

 foolishly merry. Kven those who follow this occupation 

 tor pleasure and are sure of finding a good supper w4ien 

 they come home, contract the habit of nervous melancholy 

 in the long hours of watching. Nearly all anglers are 

 predisposed to hypochondria. 



The king-fislier spends its life in an often deceptive 

 quest after food, in a painful struggle for existence. It 

 has hardly time to think of love. Its nuj)tials are of very 

 short duration : it builds its nest hastily, deposits six or 

 seven white eggs, and as soon as the young are hatched it 

 takes wing again in search of its daily subsistence. In the 

 fine season, such a life is bearable, but when the winter 

 is severe and streams are frozen, it is obliged to beat a 

 long time along the banks of the river before it finds its 

 prey, and more than once it drops down starved on the 

 frozen river. 



Tliis wild and noble-looking bird is a restless rover, a 

 lover of solitary strands and shady retreats ; he looks like 

 an exiled prince who has been changed into an animal by 

 some evil fairy. The Greeks believed him to be Alcyone, the 

 daughter of Kolus, that had been metamorjjhosed into a bird. 

 In our own time the king-fisher is still the object of vague 

 superstition in some rural districts. As the country-people 



