“As for experiment we cannot make it out by any we have attempted, for if a single Kingfisher be hanged up with silk in an open room and where the aire is free, it observes not a constant respect unto the winde, but vainly converting doth seldome breast it right. If two be suspended in the same room they will not regularly conform their breasts, but oftimes respect the opposite points of heaven. And if we conceive that for exact exploration they should be suspended where the air is quiet and unmoved, that clear of impediment they may more freely convert upon this naturall verticity, we have also made this way of inquisition, suspending them in large and spacious glasses closely stopped; wherein, neverthelesse, we observed a casuall station, and that they rested irregularly upon conversion.” It was formerly held that if the dead bodies of these birds were put away in chests they protected garments from the ravages of moths, and it was believed that the feathers of a dead kingfisher were renewed in all their splendour every year. It was an article of faith, too, that the plumage of the kingfisher was injurious to the eyes of those who gazed too long and too intently upon it, while the possession of even a feather was a protection against lightning. According to the old Greek myth, Halcyone was the daughter of Æolus. Her husband, Ceyx, king of Trachyn, was drowned in the Ægean Sea, and the widowed Halcyone, wandering on the shore, saw afar the dead body of her husband. The gods, in pity, turned her into a bird, which with eager wings bore her spirit across the waste of waters, and that Ceyx might be able to return the love she lavished upon him, he, too, was permitted the same transformation. It was an old belief that during the space of fourteen days, while the young kingfishers were being hatched, a great calm fell upon all things, and this period of quietness and security is referred to by many of our writers.[98] A very beautiful illustration may be found in Milton’s “Hymn on the Nativity,” where he describes how:— “Peaceful was the night Wherein the Prince of Light His reign of peace upon the earth began; The winds with wonder whist, Smoothly the waters kiss’d, Whispering new joys to the wild ocean, Which now hath quite forgot to rave, While birds of calm sit brooding on the charmed wave.” The word halcyon is Greek and signifies brooding on the sea, as it was formerly believed that the kingfisher laid its eggs in a floating nest upon the sea. Drayton writes, for example, of “The halcyon, whom the sea obeys When she her nest upon the water lays.” While Dryden, to quote one more instance, says: “Amidst our arms as quiet you shall be As halcyon brooding on a winter’s sea.”