By River and Pool. 203 



Things, &c., writes: " A little bird called the King's 

 fisher, being hanged up in the air by the neck, his 

 neb or bill will be always direct or straight against 

 the wind. This was told me for a very truth by one 

 that knew it by proof, as he said." Possibly the 

 superstition widely prevailed at that remote date, as 

 four years later Storer, in his Life and Death of 

 Thomas Wolsey, Cardinal, gives it thus: 



" As a Halcyon with her turning breast 

 Demonstrates wind from wind, and east from west ". 



Marlowe (Jew of Malta, i. i) has another rendering 

 of the superstition, thus : 



" But now how stands the wind? 

 Into what corner peers my Halcyon's bill? 

 Ha! To the East? Yes! See, how stand the vanes? 

 East and by south." 



It is interesting to remark that the quaint old super- 

 stition is not quite dead, even at the close of the 

 nineteenth century! We have on more than one 

 occasion come across country people in Yorkshire 

 and Derbyshire who have assured us that the dead 

 body of the Kingfisher, if hung up by a thread, will 

 turn its beak in the direction of the wind then pre- 

 vailing. Mummified Kingfishers were also believed 

 to be a charm against thunderbolts, and also a pre- 

 servative against clothes-moths. Professor Newton 

 informs us in his Dictionary of Birds that in many 

 islands of the Pacific Ocean the indigenous King- 



