KINGFISHER. 
453 
taught me this mean of living happy could not 
forbear shedding tears ; he told me that the loss of 
such a skin that he had made him lose also his 
wife and his goods. I told him that such a bird 
could not be so very rare, since a countryman of his 
had brought me one, with its skin and its feathers : 
he was much surprised, and said, that if he had the 
luck to find one, he would give it to no person.” 
Captain Cook met with kingfishers in the South 
Sea Islands, which are more than one thousand 
five hundred leagues distant from any continent. 
Even here these birds are venerated ; and in his 
second voyage Mr. Foster has introduced the fol- 
lowing passage : 
“ In the afternoon we shot, at Ulietea, some 
kingfishers. The moment that I had fired last, we 
met with Oreo and his family, who were walking 
on the beach with captain Cook. The chief did 
not observe the bird which I held in my hand, but 
his daughter wept for the death of her eatua or 
genius, and fled from me when I offered to touch 
her : her mother and most of the women who ac- 
companied her seemed also concerned for this ac- 
cident ; and the chief, mounting on his canoe, en- 
treated us in a very serious tone to spare the king- 
fishers and the herons of his island, at the same 
time granting us permission to kill all the other 
birds. We tried in vain to discover the cause of 
this veneration for these two species.” 
We are gravely told by both Aristotle and Pliny, 
that the halcyon, or kingfisher, was common in the 
