256 
HALCYONIDvE. 
habitation ascending, by which means the filthy matter 
runs off, and may frequently be seen on the outside/' 
Mr. Wolley tells me that the Kingfisher always enters 
its nest by making a direct shoot into its hole from a 
bough opposite to it, and, generally, on the other side of 
the water; it usually forms the hole for itself, and, should 
this be destroyed, will commence another within a few 
inches of it. 
In the summer of last year, as some men were digging 
the foundation for a house in a wild portion of Oatlands 
park, and at a considerable distance from any water, they 
discovered the nest and eggs of a Kingfisher, which was 
built in the gravelly side of a hole from which the roots 
of a tree had been extracted. 
The Rev. A. C. Smith informs me, that at his father’s 
residence in the neighbourhood of Devizes, where there 
is scarcely any running water, a pair of Kingfishers 
“ chose as their resting-place the bank of a pond in a 
cow-yard (in which yard stood about forty cows daily), 
and within twenty yards of a farmhouse, pigsties, and 
all the noise and bustle of a regular farm, and here they 
reared their young." 
