450 ALCEDINHLE. 



Sir T. Browne tells us (Pseudodoxia Epidem. bk. iii. chap, x.) 

 that he tried the experiment, hut in spite of his failure, the 

 belief survived, and may indeed yet exist. Mrs. Charlotte 

 Smith in her ' Natural History of Birds', posthumously 

 published in 1807, speaks (i. p. 88) of having once or twice 

 seen a Kingfisher suspended to a cottage ceiling and of being 

 " assured that it served the purpose of a weather vane," 

 though sheltered from the direct influence of the wind.* 



The Kingfisher is generally distributed over most parts of 

 Great Britain, breeding yearly in every English county, and 

 occurring, says Mr. Gray, on almost all streams throughout 

 the west of Scotland south of Sutherland.! It has been 

 found in Islay and Skye, though not in the Outer Hebrides ; 

 but it is to be met with at least occasionally in all suitable 

 localities in Ireland, chiefly as an autumn or winter visitant, 

 though it has bred near Belfast. In Scandinavia it is hardly 

 more than a straggler, appearing from August to March, not 

 uncommonly in Denmark, but very rarely in Norway and 

 Sweden, and only in the south of those countries, while 

 only one instance of its breeding is recorded, namely near 

 Jonkoping in 1872. It is pretty common in Mecklenburg 

 but scarcer in Pomerania, and is extremely rare in Curland 

 and the Baltic provinces of Russia. Further eastward its 

 northern limits seem not to be defined, but it occurs in the 

 southern part of Perm. Pallas states that it is common 

 on the Irtish and that he had received it from the Jenesei ; 

 but, though Dr. Finsch (Verhandl. zool.-bot. Gesellsch. 

 Wien, 1879, p. 153) saw a specimen from Omsk, it may be 

 doubted whether some of the birds found in these districts 

 do not belong to the nearly-allied Alcedo lengalensis, which 

 alone seems to occur in Turkestan ; while on the other hand 

 Mr. Hume records what cannot be specifically distinguished 

 from our A. ispida as abundant in Sindh, and the latter oc- 



* The Editor has failed to find any exhaustive account of the many interesting 

 fables concerning the Kingfisher. Aldrovandus gives a great number, but Hol- 

 land's translation of Pliny should not be overlooked, nor Rennie's ' Architecture 

 of Birds,' and M. Holland's ' Faune Populaire de la France.' 



f In some parts of Scotland the Dipper is known as the Kingfisher. 



