﻿of the African Kingfishers live entirely on such food. Our Kingfisher is not an unsociable 

 bird, and I have sometimes observed one of these small feathered fishermen pass by the 

 haunt of another without the latter even moving a wing, and I could be sure that they were 

 nut a pair belonging to each other. The usual breeding-time I have found to be April, May 

 and -June. Generally they have but one brood in the year, but if anything happens to the 

 first the female not rarely has another, and it is such a brood that one finds in July or 

 A.ugOS& This 1 determined by marking the bills of three females with a file and 

 afterwards catching them on the nest. The position of the nest-hole I have found in a 

 straight bank, which is not necessarily washed by the water. I have as an exception found 

 it in a bank about twenty paces from water, and divided from it by a well-frequented path. 

 The circular hole, about two or three inches in diameter, in low banks is just under the edge, 

 and in high banks about the middle or below that. It narrows slightly, and rises gradually . 

 or runs quite horizontal, and is tunneled a foot and a half to as much as three feet and a 

 half into the bank. 1 have sometimes known them to turn off to one side, but in such 

 cases have invariably found roots or stones to be the obstacle to its continuation in a direct 

 line. The well-known grooved marks on each side of the base are more or less distinctly 

 worked out in the neighbourhood of the outlet, or in much-used holes are quite effaced. 

 The oven-like or lentile-shaped chamber at the end is evenly domed, generally six inches 

 wide and four inches high, and the bird only begins to furnish it with discarded bones and 

 scales of fish which it has eaten, after commencing to lay the eggs. Newly-finished 

 chambers without eggs never have a trace of this peculiar nesting-material, which 

 during the time of laying the eggs and sitting gradually increases in size and 

 accumulates so that at last it forms a foundation evenly arranged, several lines high. 

 "When incubation has commenced one never finds an egg on the bare earth, and 

 indeed the eggs require from their number and size as do also the naked young, 

 in addition to the warmth of the mother, some protection from the bad conductor 

 of warmth in the shape of the chilly earth ; so that it is to me perfectly incomprehensible 

 how people can speak of a chance collection of these remains in the nesting-chamber. 

 Moreover, these remains have the same physical properties and serve exactly the 

 same end as a foundation of dry grass, straw, &c, which birds habitually frequenting the 

 water can the less easily make use of. I should add that the digging of the hole, which 

 steins so great an undertaking for so small a bird, is completed in a comparatively short 

 time, and I can show that the space of scarcely a week suffices in some instances. In the 

 eager picking and digging, often in hard sand rubble, the beak is much used; and the bird 

 appears from choice to work icith the upper mandible only, for I have often found it shortened 

 one or two lines, and in one instance one-third of the length was wanting, having, as it 

 seems, been broken off. I never found them in colonies, and when several holes are close 

 together only one is inhabited. The shortest distance between inhabited holes was about 

 fifty paces. I have, without exception, found seven to constitute the full complement of 

 < it -. evi ii in a second brood. 1 have been unable to prove or disprove that 15-11) days, as 

 stated, is the period of incubation." 



Respecting the use of the upper mandible in digging, Dr. Kiitter adds the following 

 footnote : — 



" This is easily to be understood on anatomical grounds, inasmuch as the upper 

 inaudible is fixed fast to the skull ; whereas the weaker under mandible, being attached to 

 the skull only by joints and sinews, can less easily withstand the hard work of digging. 

 It is probable that on these grounds the Woodpeckers work, in excavating their holes, 

 with the upper mandible and not with closed bill, but I cannot state this from my own 

 observation." 



The toll. • wing letter on the " Nesting of the Kingfisher," from the pen of that 

 well-known Naturalist Mr. George Dawson Rowley, appeared in the Field for 1866, 

 addressed to the Editor, and is of sufficient interest to be transcribed verbatim: — 



