ii6 BOMBAY DUCKS 



come out again, dashed his prey to death on a stone, 

 and swallowed the luckless fish. 



The roller obtains his insect quarry in a very similar 

 way. He takes up his position on the summit of a post, 

 or on a railing, or a telegraph wire, and sits there motion- 

 less, pretending to be asleep. As a matter of fact, he is 

 keeping a very sharp look out. Presently he espies an 

 insect moving on the ground below, whereupon he flies 

 to the ground and returns to his perch with the insect 

 inside him. Both kingfishers and rollers must have 

 marvellous eyesight. A roller will " spot " an insect in 

 the grass twenty of thirty feet away and fly down and 

 seize it. 



The white-breasted kingfisher is, as we have seen, an 

 example of a bird which is undergoing evolution under 

 our very eyes. As generation succeeds generation, this 

 bird goes in less for fishing and more for insect catching, 

 so that now he often lives and flourishes far away from 

 water, feeding almost entirely on insects. Hence his 

 habits approximate very closely to those of the roller. 

 There is, consequently, nothing wildly improbable in 

 the hypothesis that, far back in the dim vista of time, 

 there was no distinction between rollers and kingfishers, 

 that the ancestral roller-kingfisher was a brilliantly 

 coloured bird which picked up a living in a varieiy of 

 ways, sometimes catching insects and at others fish, 

 those that lived near streams naturally devoting them- 

 selves more exclusively to fish catching, and those which 

 dwelt on the plains, far from water, contenting them- 

 selves with hunting insects. 



Thus two races, having distinct habits, were formed, 



