This bird is a little larger than a sparrow, and the greater part of its body is of an azure blue color, with a slight intermixture of white and purple in some of the larger feathers, while the neck is long and slender. There is one kind that is remarkable for its larger size and its note; the smaller ones are heard singing in the reed-beds. It is a thing of very rare occurrence to see a halcyon, and then it is only about the time of the setting of the Vergili?, and the summer and winter solstices; when one is sometimes to be seen to hover about a ship, and then immediately disappear. They hatch their young at the time of the winter solstice, from which circumstance those days are known as the “halcyon days:” durin............