THE KINGFISHER. 
I I I 
they build and sit on their nests they keep the seas calm for the space of seven, 
eleven, or fourteen days during the winter, hence known as “ Halcyon days.” So 
Pliny writes (we quote from Holland’s translation) :—“ The Halcyones are of great 
name and much marked. The very seas and they that saile thereupon know well 
when they sit and breed. This bird so notable, is little bigger than a sparrow; 
for the more part of her pennage, blue, intermingled yet among with white and 
purple feathers, having a thin small neck and long withall. They lay and sit 
about mid-winter when daies be shortest; and the time whiles they are broodie is 
called the Halcyon daies, for during that season the sea is calm and navigable, 
especially on the coast of Sicilie.” Milton makes a beautiful use of this notion in 
his Ode on the “Nativity”— 
“But peaceful was the night, 
Wherein the Prince of Light 
His reign of peace upon the earth began ; 
The winds with wonder whist 
Smoothly the waters kist, 
Whispering new joys to the mild ocean, 
Who now hath quite forgot to rave, 
While birds of calm sit brooding on the charmed wave.” 
An old English poet called Wild uses the same idea — 
“The peaceful Kingfishers are met together 
/ About the decks and prophesie calm weather.” 
And Joan of Arc (in “Henry VI.,” Part I.) says— 
“ Expect St. Martin’s summer, Halcyon days.” 
To return, however, to Pliny’s folk-lore, the Halcyon’s nest is, he tells us, about the 
size of a tennis-ball, with a narrow mouth ; it cannot be cut open with iron, but 
must be broken by a violent blow, being composed of the dry foam of the sea. 
Men are at a loss, however, he adds, to see how it can be put together, and some 
think it is made of sharpened fish-bones, inasmuch as the old birds live on fish. 
These fables are curious examples of the vice which runs through so much of the 
ancients’ natural history. Hearsay and fancy are prominent in it. Even such a 
man as Pliny did not take the trouble to look at a Kingfisher’s nest for himself. 
But whatever the nest was made of, under the name of Halcyoneum it was endowed 
with medicinal powers of great virtue. There are four varieties of this supposed 
Halcyoneum, Pliny resumes, found in the sea. Could he have been thinking of 
spermaceti? It was useful in skin diseases and for injuries of the eye. Sir 
