Of all British birds, none is so beautiful or so secluded in its habits as the kingfisher. Its presence is peculiarly in keeping with the rapid rocky trout streams which it loves to haunt. Its low, arrow-like flight, as it darts like a streak of azure, green, and gold, is familiar to every angler. He hears it far down stream; it comes under the old ivied bridge, passes like a flash, and is gone--how quickly the following will show. Mr. George Rooper, the well-known Biographer of the Salmon, was travelling on the Great Western Railway, which between Pangbourne and Reading runs parallel with, and close to, the Thames. As the train approached the river a kingfisher started from the bank and flew along the river for nearly a mile. Mr. Rooper watched it the whole distance, and its relative position with the window never varied a yard; the bird flying at exactly the same pace as that at which the train travelled, and which the observer had just previously ascertained to be fifty-five miles an hour. This is about half the speed at which the eider-duck flies, as, when fairly on the wing, it makes upwards of one hundred and twenty miles an hour. The rapidity with which all birds of the plover kind fly is well known, and a "trip" of golden plover have been seen midway between Hawaii and the mainland. An officer in Donald Currie's line recently brought home with him a specimen of the St. Helena waxbill which he caught when on watch on the bridge of the _Grantully Castle_. At the time the nearest land was distant a thousand miles, and the little captive was so distressed that it quietly allowed the officer to capture it.