The Belted Kingfisher 57 



It is said that some of the Asiatic nations still- wear its skin 

 about their persons as a protection against moral and physi- 

 cal evils. Its feathers are used as love-charms, and it is 

 believed that if its body is evenly fixed upon a pivot it will 

 turn its head to the north like the magnetic needle does. It 

 was also believed that its dried body would avert thunder- 

 bolts, and if kept in a wardrobe it would preserve the woolen 

 stuffs from the moths. 



From mythology we learn that Ceyx was the son of 

 Hesperus and Halcyone, his wife, was the daughter of Aeolus. 

 In the death of his brother, Ceyx met with a great loss and 

 in his distress determined on a voyage to Charos to consult 

 the oracle Apollo. This grieved Halcyone very much and she 

 tried to dissuade him from going by telling him of the violence 

 of the winds which he would encounter. He persisted in 

 going, and as predicted, his life was lost in the storm. In 

 the meantime Halcyone, ignorant of his loss, counted the 

 days till her husband's promised return. She prayed inces- 

 santly that he might be safe. The goddess to whom she 

 prayed, at length could not bear any longer to be pleaded 

 with for one already dead. She directed Somnus to send a 

 vision to Halcyone in her sleep, and make known to her the 

 death of Ceyx. Somnus delegated the doing of it to his son 

 Morpheus, who flew to the Hsemonian city where Halcyone 

 was asleep, and assuming the form of Ceyx, with tears in his 

 eyes, bent over the bed and said to Halcyone, "Do you rec- 

 ognize your Ceyx, unhappy wife, or has death, too, changed 

 my vision? Behold me, know me, your husband's shadow in- 

 stead of himself. Your prayers availed me nothing. I am 

 dead." She wept, groaned, stretched out her arms in her 

 sleep and tried to embrace his body, but grasped only the air. 

 She cried, "This it was that my presaging mind foreboded, 

 when I implored him not to leave me, to trust himself to the 

 waves. O, how I wish, since thou wouldst go, thou hadst 

 taken me with thee ! It would have been far better. Then 

 I should have no remnant of life to spend without thee, nor a 

 separate death to die." It was now morning. She went to the 

 seashore, and sought the spot where she last saw Ceyx, and 

 looking out over the sea discerned an indistinct object floating 



