Page:EB1911 - Volume 15.djvu/837

Rh animal would remain helpless like an upturned turtle, because it is unable to reach the ground with its legs when lying on its back. Before the tail is sufficiently developed to be used for that purpose, the young king-crab succeeds in regaining the normal position by flapping its flattened abdominal appendages and rising in the water by that means. The king-crab fishery



.

is an industry of some importance in the United States, and in the East Indies the natives eat the animal and tip their lances and arrows with the caudal spine. They also use the hollow empty shell as a water-ladle or pan—hence the name “pan-fish” or “saucepan-crab” by which the animal is sometimes known. Fossil king-crabs have been recorded from strata of the Tertiary and Secondary epochs, and related but less specialized types of the same order are found in rocks of Palaeozoic age. Of these the most important are Belinurus of the Carboniferous, Protolimulus of the Devonian, and Hemiaspis of the Silurian periods. These ancient forms differ principally from true king-crabs in having the segments of the opisthosoma or hinder half of the body distinctly defined instead of welded into a hexagonal shield.

 KINGFISHER (Ger. Königsfischer; Walloon Roi-péheux=pêcheur), the Alceḍo ispida of ornithologists, one of the most beautiful and well-known of European birds, being found, though nowhere very abundantly, in every European country, as well as in North Africa and South-Western Asia as far as Sindh. Its blue-green back and rich chestnut breast render it conspicuous as it frequents the streams and ponds whence it procures its food, by plunging almost perpendicularly into the water, and emerging a moment after with the prey—whether a small fish, crustacean, or an aquatic insect—it has captured. In hard frosts it resorts to the sea-shore, but a severe winter is sure to occasion a great mortality in the species, for many of its individuals seem unable to reach the tidal waters where only in such a season they could obtain sustenance; and to this cause rather than any other is perhaps to be ascribed its general scarcity. Very early in the year it prepares its nest, which is at the end of a tunnel bored by itself in a bank, and therein the six or eight white, glossy, translucent eggs are laid, sometimes on the bare soil, but often on the fishbones which, being indigestible, are thrown up in pellets by the birds; and, in any case, before incubation is completed these rejectamenta accumulate so as to form a pretty cup-shaped structure that increases in bulk after the young are hatched, but, mixed with their fluid excretions and with decaying fishes brought for their support, soon becomes a dripping fetid mass.

The kingfisher is the subject of a variety of legends and superstitions, both classical and medieval. Of the latter one of the most curious is that having been originally a plain grey bird it acquired its present bright colours by flying towards the sun on its liberation from Noah’s ark, when its upper surface assumed the hue of the sky above it and its lower plumage was scorched by the heat of the setting orb to the tint it now bears. More than this, the kingfisher was supposed to possess many virtues. Its dried body would avert thunderbolts, and if kept in a wardrobe would preserve from moths the woollen stuffs therein laid, or hung by a thread to the ceiling of a chamber would point with its bill to the quarter whence the wind blew. All readers of Ovid (Metam., bk. xi.) know how the faithful but unfortunate Ceyx and Alcyone were changed into kingfishers—birds which bred at the winter solstice, when through the influence of Aeolus, the wind-god and father of the fond wife, all gales were hushed and the sea calmed so that their floating nest might ride uninjured over the waves during the seven proverbial “Halcyon days”; while a variant or further development of the fable assigned to the halcyon itself the power of quelling storms.

The common kingfisher of Europe is the representative of a well-marked family of birds, the Alcedinidae or Halcyonidae of ornithologists, which is considered by most authorities to be closely related to the Bucerotidae (see ); but the affinity can scarcely be said as yet to be proved. Be that as it may, the present family forms the subject of an important work by Bowdler Sharpe. Herein are described one hundred and twenty-five species, nearly all of them being beautifully figured by Keulemans, and that number may be taken even now as approximately correct; for, while the validity of a few has been denied by some eminent men, nearly as many have since been made known, and it seems likely that two or three more described by older writers may yet be rediscovered. These one hundred and twenty-five species Sharpe groups in nineteen genera, and divides into two sub-families, Alcedininae and Daceloninae, the one containing five and the other fourteen genera. With existing anatomical materials perhaps no better arrangement could have been made, but the method afterwards published by Sundevall (Tentamen, pp. 95, 96) differs from it not inconsiderably. Here, however, it will be convenient to follow Sharpe. Externally, which is almost all we can at present say, kingfishers present a great uniformity of structure. One of their most remarkable features is the feebleness of their feet, and the union (syndactylism) of the third and fourth digits for the greater part of their length; while, as if still