228 HALCYOSID.E. 



Cowper is perhaps the latest poet who has referred to these 

 fancies in the following couplet 



"As firm as the rock and as calm as the flood, 

 Where the peace-loving Halcyon deposits her brood.' 1 



But this was not the only power attributed to the King- 

 fisher ; it was also supposed that the dead bird carefully 

 balanced and suspended by a single thread, would always 

 turn its beak towards that point of the compass from which 

 the wind blew. Storer, in his poem on the life, &c., of 

 Cardinal Wolsey, says 



" Or as a Halcyon, with her turning breast, 

 Demonstrates -wind from wind, and east from west." 



Kent, in Shakspeare's King Lear, speaks of rogues who 



-" Turn their Halcyon beaks 



With every gale and vary of their masters." 



After Shakspeare's allusion, Marlowe, in his Jew of Malta, 

 has the lines 



" But how now stands the wind ? 

 Into what corner peers my Halcyon's bill ? " 



And Mrs. Charlotte Smith, in her Natural History of 

 Birds, says, " I have once or twice seen a stuffed bird of 

 this species hung up to the beam of a cottage ceiling, and 

 imagined that the beauty of the feathers had recommended 

 it to this sad pre-eminence, till, on inquiry, I was assured 

 that it served the purpose of a weather vane ; and though 

 sheltered from the immediate influence of the wind, never 

 failed to show every change by turning its beak to the 

 quarter whence the wind blew." 



The Kingfisher is generally distributed over Great 

 Britain, but is not so numerous in Scotland as it appears 

 to be in Ireland. M tiller includes it among the birds of 

 Denmark, but considers it rare : it does not appear to be 



