ar as to be within reach of the open waters. As they subsist on the
smaller kinds of fishes, they would perish with hunger, after the waters
are frozen, if they did not migrate. But the Kingfisher often remains on
the coast during open winters, and may therefore be considered one of
our winter-birds.

This bird is the celebrated Alcedo, or Halcyon, of the ancients, who
attributed to him many apparently supernatural powers. He was supposed
to construct his nest upon the waves, on which it was made to float like
a skiff. But as the turbulence of a storm would be likely to cause its
destruction, Nature had gifted him with the extraordinary power of
stilling the motions of the winds and waves, during the period of
incubation. Hence the serene weather that accompanies the summer
solstice was supposed to be occasioned by the benign influence of this
bird, and the term "halcyon days" was applied to this period. It is
remarkable that the fable should add to these supernatural gifts the
power of song, as one of the accomplishments of the Kingfisher. These
superstitions must have been very general among the ancients, and were
not confined to the Greeks and Romans. Some of the Asiatic nations still
wear the skin of the Kingfisher about their persons, as a protection
against both moral and physical evils; the feathers are used as
love-charms; and it is believed, that, if the body of the Kingfisher be
evenly fixed upon a pivot, it will turn its head to the north, like the
magnetic needle.

This bird is singularly grotesque in his appearance, though not without
beauty of plumage. With his long, straight, and quadrangular bill, his
short and diminutive feet and legs, and his immense head, his plumage
of a handsome dusky blue, with a bluish band on the breast and a white
collar around the neck,--when this mixture of the grotesque and the
beautiful is considered in connection with the singularity of his
habits, we need not marvel at the superstitions connected with his
history. He sits patiently, like an angler, on a post at the head of a
wharf, or on a branch of a tree that extends over the bank, and, leaning
obliquely, with extended head and beak, he watches for his finny prey.
There, with the light blue sky above him and the dark blue waves
beneath, nothing on the surface of the water can escape his penetrating
eyes. Quickly, with a sudden swoop, he seizes a single fish from an
unsuspecting shoal, and announces his success by the pe