ia8 THE BIEDS OF 'VIKGIL. 



our Kingfisher, which is still an Italian bird and the only 

 one of its kind, I can have no reasonable doubt ; for Pliny's 

 description of the bird is too exact to be mistaken. 'It is,' 

 he says, 'a little larger than a sparrow, of a blue-green colour 

 (colore cyanea), red in the under parts, having some white 

 feathers close to its neck, and a long thin bill.' This description, 

 it is true, is copied almost word for word from Aristotle, 

 the only exception being the allusion to the white feathers 

 on the side of the neck, which are a well-known feature in 

 the Kingfisher.^ Whether both were thinking of the same bird 

 it is impossible to decide ; but that Pliny was describing our 

 Kingfisher, and believed Aristotle to have done so in the 

 passage he copied, it is almost unreasonable to doubt. 



It is however an open question whether the bird ordinarily 

 known to the Greeks as oKkvosu is to be identified with the King- 

 fisher. The greatest living authority on the birds of the 

 Levant, Canon Tristram of Durham, tells me that he has 

 convinced himself that it is not the Kingfisher, but the Tern, or 

 Sea-swallow : a rare coin of Eretria led him to this conclusion, 

 on which a Tern is figured, sitting on the back of a cow." 



^ This exception is singular, as Pliny seems to depend on Aristotle for 

 everything else which he tells about the bird. I am inclined to think that 

 in this case Fliny must have supplemented his master's account from his 

 own observation. He had a villa on the bay of Naples, which bay was 

 probably the ' littus ' referred to by Virgil ; and both may here have seen 

 the bird on the shore. 



' I have seen a photograph of this coin, and satisfied myself that the bird 

 was meant for a Tern. But I have so far been unable to discover any 

 connexion between Eretria and the oKieiav. Sundevall is confident that 

 Aristotle's bird is the Kingfisher. 



