. Hand-book to the birds of Great Britain . es butone genus, Cery/e, of which the Belted Kingfisher, Ceryle aIcyo?i,is the type, but the genus ranges throughout the New World,from the high north even down to Chili. In the Old World there is scarcely a country that docs notpossess a Kingfisher of some sort or another, belonging to one ofthe two types recognised in the Family, which is divided intoFish-eating Kingfishers {Alccdinince) and Insect- or Reptile-eating Kingfishers {Dacelo?ii?ice). The former have a long thinbill, much compressed, fit for cleaving the water, and generally,but not alwa
. Hand-book to the birds of Great Britain . es butone genus, Cery/e, of which the Belted Kingfisher, Ceryle aIcyo?i,is the type, but the genus ranges throughout the New World,from the high north even down to Chili. In the Old World there is scarcely a country that docs notpossess a Kingfisher of some sort or another, belonging to one ofthe two types recognised in the Family, which is divided intoFish-eating Kingfishers {Alccdinince) and Insect- or Reptile-eating Kingfishers {Dacelo?ii?ice). The former have a long thinbill, much compressed, fit for cleaving the water, and generally,but not always, a short rudder-like tail. This is, indeed, byno means an universal characteristic, and among the Insect- THE KINGFISHERS. 63 eating Kingfishers, there are several which have a short taillike the true AlcediiiificB^ and yet live in forests and never feedon fish. The palate is bridged, or desmognathous ; there are nobasipterygoid processes; the hallux, or first hind-toe, is con-nected with the flexor perforans digitoriun, and the sole of. Ventral aspect of the bill of the Giant Kingfisher {Dacelo gigas), to showthe desmognathous palate. [From the Catalogue of Osteological Specimensin the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons.] Letters as before. the foot is flat, the front toes being uiited together for thegreater part of their extent—hence the birds are Anisodactyle. The eggs are white and hidden from sight, as with otherPicarian Birds, being mostly deposited in the hole of a bank ortree. The young are hatched naked, but the feathers aredeveloped in well-marked lines or tracts, and are for a longtime enclosed in the sheath, imparting a singularly bristlyappearance to the nestUng (see p. 34). Of the Insect-eating Kingfishers, of which we have no re-presentatives in the northern parts of the world, the nearestallies to our own Kingfisher are the African genus Ispidina,and the Indian and Moluccan genus Ceyx, the latter having onlythree toes. The large genus Halcyon^ consist
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