IN FEATHERS AND FUR, 75 
nice to have there, the bird has the power to throw them up, which 
he does in the nest, to make a nice bed for the eggs. One variety 
of this family, living in Brazil, lives far away from any stream. 
He sits on the castor oil plant, and darts on grasshoppers and 
lizards. And still another of the family living in Brazil, is violet 
and orange-colored, and eats — centipedes and snails. 
But the beauty of the whole family — though every one is 
lovely — is the Racquet Tailed Kingfisher, and lives in the Malay 
Islands. His bill is coral red, his back and wings purple, his 
shoulders and head azure blue, and his breast white. 
But that is not all. His principal beauty is his tail. It is all 
very long, but the two middle feathers are two or three times as 
long as the bird himself. They are very narrow till near the end, 
where they swell out into a spoon shape. All the tail feathers are 
white with narrow tips of blue. 
The common Kingfisher has a history. The ancients called 
him the halcyon, and had some curious superstitions about him, 
such as that his dead body was a protection against lightning, and 
also against war. Even now, in some dark corners in France, the 
pretty little dead bodies are thought to protect woolen cloths from 
moths, and are called moth-birds. If they do perform that use, it 
must be by their smell, for it must be confessed there's one very- 
uncomfortable thing about them — they have a dreadful odor, and 
it all comes from the odd little bed of fish-bones. In spite of their 
splashing in the water every time they eat a mouthful, and in spite 
of any soakings or cleansings you can give, the live birds, and 
even their dead and stuffed bodies, will have the same unpleasant 
smell. 
They have a more dignified name than Kingfisher, moth-bird, 
or halcyon. In the big, wise book, they are called by the imposing 
name of Alcedo Ispida. But you and I don't care for the wise 
books yet. 
One of the Kingfisher family — some sort of a cousin to ours, 
I suppose — lives in Australia, and is called " laughing-jackass," 
from his peculiar cry. He is one of the largest of the family, 
being eighteen inches long. He's a droll looking fellow, generally 
sitting humped up on a branch, with his chin resting on his breast. 
He don't care so much for fish as most of the Kingfisher family, 
and often lives on the plains, where he hunts insects, reptiles, 
snakes and small animals, such as rats. 
