The Sacred Halcyon does not inhabit Van Diemen’s Land, but is very generally dispersed over the Australian continent. I have specimens from nearly every locality: those from Port Essington on the north are precisely identical with those of the south coast; on the other hand, those inhabiting Western Australia are a trifle larger in all their measurements, but otherwise present no differences of sufficient importance to warrant their being considered as distinct. It is a summer resident in New South Wales and throughout the southern portion of the continent, retiring northwards after the breeding-season. It begins to disappear in December, and by the end of January few are to be seen: solitary individuals may, however, be met with even in the depth of winter. They return again in spring, commencing in August, and by the middle of September are plentifully dispersed over all parts of the country, inhabiting alike the most thickly wooded brushes, the mangrove-forests which border, in many parts, the armlets of the sea, and the more open and thinly-timbered plains of the interior, often in the most dry and arid situations far distant from water; and it would appear that, as is the case with many of the insectivorous birds of Australia, a supply of that element is not essential to its existence, since, from the localities it is often found breeding in, it must necessarily pass long periods without being able to obtain it. The brilliant and metallic lustre of its plumage renders it a conspicuous object in the bush: its loud piercing call, also, often betrays its presence, particularly during the season of incubation, when the bird becomes more and more clamorous as the tree in which its eggs are deposited is approached by the intruder. The note most frequently uttered is a loud _pee-pee_, continued at times to a great length, resembling a cry of distress. It sits very upright, generally perching on a small dead branch for hours together, merely flying down to capture its prey, and in most instances returning again to the site it has just left. Its food is of a very mixed character, and varies with the nature of the localities it inhabits. It greedily devours the manti, grasshoppers and caterpillars, not refusing lizards and very small snakes, all of which are swallowed whole, the latter being killed by beating their heads against a stone or other hard substance, after the manner of the Common Kingsfisher. Specimens killed in the neighbourhood of salt-marshes had their stomachs literally crammed with crabs and other crustaceous animals; while engaged in the capture of which it may be observed sitting silently on the low mangrove-bushes skirting the pools which every receding tide leaves either dry or with a surface of wet mud, upon which crabs are to be found in abundance. I have never seen it plunge into the water after fish like the true Kingsfishers, and I believe it never resorts to that mode of obtaining its prey. On the