698 THE AMERICAN NATURALIST. [Vol. XXXVII. 



in the memoir. Of these a subfamily division was made, the 

 line being drawn between the insectivorous Daceloninae, with 

 14 genera and 84 species, and the piscivorous Alcedininae, con- 

 taining the balance of the group. Now as will be seen, the 

 Halcyones are placed between the Coraciae on the one hand, 

 and the Bucerotes on the other, a long ways removed from such 

 forms as the Galbulidae or jacamars, the Buccones, and the 

 ground cuckoos. (( ieococcyx), birds that appear in widely sepa- 

 rated and entirely different orders. 



The Halcyones in the " Hand-List " we find still to be divided 

 into the two subfamilies Alcedinimr and the Daceloninae, the 

 first still containing five genera, and the last by an increase of 

 one, now containing fifteen. The number of species, however, 

 have been increased from the 125 enumerated in 1870 to about 

 200, or in other words there have been about 75 species of 

 Kingfishers described within the last thirty-two years. A 

 knowledge of their anatomy, however, has by no means kept 

 pace with this remarkable discovery of new and undescribed 

 forms. The habits of the various kinds of kingfishers are 

 described with greater or less detail in Sharpe's monograph, 

 as well as the plumage and external characters, and as highly 

 important as this is for an understanding of their affinities, it 

 cannot be properly touched upon in this paper which deals with 

 the osteology. North America is extremely poor in king- 

 fishers, as we find but two species and a subspecies of the 



in the last A. O. U. "Check-List." Australia, Africa, and the 

 East Indies claim the greatest number of forms, but their dis- 

 tribution is extremely unequal, when taken as a whole, in so far 

 as other countries are concerned. 



In studying the osteology of such species as I have been able 

 to obtain, I have taken special care to keep before me the geo- 

 graphical distribution of the family, the remarkable variations of 

 the plumage, the beaks, and particularly the feet and other 



