The architecture of birds / [Anon].

  • Rennie, James, 1787-1867.
Date:
[1831]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The architecture of birds / [Anon]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    89/428 (page 57)
    “THE GREEN TODY.: BT Kircher, ihe possessor of the bird, to-account. for the phenomenon ; for, notwithstanding his personal testimony, the whole story is evidently no less fabu- lous than the tradition of the dried body of the same bird having the property of preserving cloth and woollen stuffs from the moth, which once. induced drapers to hang it up in their shops. But this is nothing to the pretended power of the lifeless skin of averting thunder, augmenting hidden treasure, be- stowing grace and beauty on the person who carries it, and renewing its plumage each season of moult- ing.* Gmelin tells us that the Tartars pluck the feathers from a kingfisher, ‘ cast them into the water, and carefully preserve such as float, pretending that, if with one of these feathers they touch a woman, or ~ even her clothes, she must fall in love with them. The Ostiacs take the skin, the bill, and the claws of this bird, shutting them up in a purse, and so long as they preserve ‘this sort of amulet they believe they have no ill to fear. The person who taught me this means of living happy could not forbear shedding tears while he told me that the loss of a king fisher’s skin had caused him to lose both his wife and his goods,’{ Forster, our navigator, records a similar superstition in the people of Uhietea.T Allied to the kingfisher in form as well as in ha- bits, the green tody ( Todus viridis) may be recorded as a sort of miner. According to Vieillot, who speaks from personal observation, ‘ the female makes her nest in dry earth, but prefers soft friable sandstone (le tuf tendre). She makes choice, for this purpose, of ravines and small crevices, and often * Aldrovand, Ornith., ili, 621. 1 Gmelin, Voyage en Siberie, 11, 112. ¢ Cook’s Second Voyage.