killed in a season on a famous nursery in the midlands. As in the case of the heron, nothing will save the fry from these marauders but covering in the rearing ponds with the finest wire net. However one may wish to protect the kingfisher, there is no denying the fact of its _penchant_ for fish, especially the fry of salmon and trout; the bad habit is bred in him. [4] "Then the kingfisher, with rufous breast and glorious mantle of blue, would dart like a plummet from his roost, and seize unerringly any little truant which passed within his ken. The appetite of this bird was miraculous; I never saw him satisfied. He would sit for hours on a projecting bough, his body almost perpendicular, his head thrown back between his shoulders; eyeing with an abstracted air the heavens above or the rocks around him, he seemed intent only upon exhibiting the glorious lustre of his plumage, and the brilliant colours with which his azure back was shaded; but let a careless samlet stray beneath him, and in a twinkling his nonchalant attitude was abandoned. With a turn so quick that the eye could scarce follow it, his tail took the place of his head, and, falling rather than flying, he would seize his victim, toss him once into the air, catch him as he fell, head foremost, and swallow him in a second. This manoeuvre he would repeat from morning till night; such a greedy, insatiable little wretch I never saw!"--_The Autobiography of a Salmon._