86 Rev. H. B. Tristram on the Ornithology of Palestine. 
any fish-bones with the eggs, though, when there were young, 
there was a festering heap of bones and decaying filth. But 
there was always an abundantly heaped nest of grass and weeds. 
In one nest, which had been visited and robbed by Mr. Bartlett^ 
there was a family of three unfledged young; so that the bird 
must have laid again almost immediately in the same digging. 
The whole colony sat about on the oleanders, or passed and re¬ 
passed incessantly, during my operations, screaming and shriek¬ 
ing at the intruder most vociferously. The eggs of this species 
vary in shape more than those of any other Kingfisher with which 
I am acquainted. Though generally almost spherical, those of 
two nests we captured were decidedly elongated, in one case 
much more so than in the other; and the peculiarity was com¬ 
mon to the whole sitting in each case. Some confusion has 
arisen in the nomenclature of this bird, from Swainson, in his 
s Birds of West Africa^ (vol.ii.p. 95), having described the male bird 
as distinct, under the name of Ispida bicincta. The fact is, that 
the adult male always has th esecond narrow belt of black acrossthe 
chest. Degland, on the contrary, attributes this second belt to 
the female. I preserved twenty-one specimens, and many were 
collected by others of the party. In all, the sex was carefully 
noted, and the rule held good of the male having a second 
band, which was always wanting in the female and young bird. 
The young, before its first moult, has many of the feathers on 
the throat and breast, both above and below the band, delicately 
tipped with a slaty-black crescent-shaped mark. The range of 
Ceryle rudis is most extensive, from Western Africa and the 
Cape of Good Hope to the furthest parts of China and Japan. 
It is evidently the bird intended by Russell, in his f Natural 
History of Aleppo/ under the name of Alcedo alcyon , var. 7, 
and was first described by Hasselquist. 
Halcyon smyrnensis, L., is also noted by Russell in his f Natural 
History of Aleppo/ but for a century since his time it appears to 
have eluded the observation of naturalists, until rediscovered by 
Captain Graves and reported in an interesting paper by Mr. 
Strickland (Ann. Nat. Hist. vol. ix. p. 441). It has been 
imagined that the Indian bird, called by Boddaert H. fuscus , 
was distinct ; but Strickland has very clearly shown their 
