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If the Soul of the little yellow kingfisher now were to die, without a successor being found ready at once to receive and embody it, then the whole race of little yellow kingfishers would vanish altogether; and if I myself, the King of the Birds, who am, as it were, the Soul and life of all of them, were to die without a successor being at hand to receive my spirit, then all the race of birds, with one accord, would become extinct forthwith and forever."
But outside of the town I saw no kingfishers and no rare species at all, and comparatively few birds of any kind. It might have been a town of Philistine cockneys who at no very distant period had emigrated thither from the parish of St. Giles-in-the-Fields. I came home with the local guide-book in my pocket.
It may be remarked in passing, that the waste of food, in the present disorganized state of nature, is not only in our streams. The introduction of one or more of these lovely foreign kingfishers would not certainly have the effect of hastening the decline of our native species; but indirectly it might bring about a contrary result a subject to be touched on at the end of this paper.
Owing to the great preponderance among the birds, of parrots, pigeons, kingfishers, and sunbirds, almost all of gay or delicate colours, and many adorned with the most gorgeous plumage, and to the numbers of very large and showy butterflies which are almost everywhere to be met with, the forests of the Moluccas offer to the naturalist a very striking example of the luxuriance and beauty of animal life in the tropics.
His blue wings, his ruddy front, the white streak beside his neck, and long bill, were all visible for a moment; then he was away straight over the meadow, the directness of his course enabling it to be followed for some time till he cleared the distant hedge, probably going to visit his nest. Kingfishers, though living by the stream, often build a good way from water.
It was a solemn afternoon, as the white, unwinking sun looked down upon our silent party, on the narrow turbid river, silent too, except for the occasional plunge of an alligator or other water monster on mangrove swamps and nipah palms dense along the river side, on the blue gleam of countless kingfishers, on slimy creeks arched over to within a few feet of their surface by grand trees with festoon of lianas, on an infinite variety of foliage, on an abundance of slender-shafted palms, on great fruits brilliantly colored, on wonderful flowers on the trees, on the hoya carnosa and other waxen-leaved trailers matting the forest together and hanging down in great festoons, the fiery tropic sunblaze stimulating all this over-production into perennial activity, and vivifying the very mud itself.
Time would fail us to tell of the feathered life around us, the blackbirds that build securely in these thickets, the stray swallows that dip their wings in the quiet waters, and the kingfishers that still bring, as the ancients fabled, halcyon days.
McClelland's exquisite suggestion that the peculiar brilliancy of the Indian river carps makes them serve 'as a better mark for kingfishers, terns, and other birds which are destined to keep the number of these fishes in check. The idea of Providence and the Horse Guards conspiring to render any creature an easier target for the attacks of enemies is worthy of the decadent school of natural history, and cannot for a moment be dispassionately considered by a judicious critic.
The kingfishers grouped in the two cases before which the visitor now stands, include specimens of the Australian brown kingfisher; the green and great jacamars of South America; the European bee eater; the Javan night bird; and the Ternate kingfisher from the Philippine Islands.
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