“I suppose no one is always right, Ned. Why?”
“About that bird—bird he shot. He said it was a kingfisher.”
“Well, so it is. You heard him explain about its habits?”
“Yes; and that’s what bothers me. How can it be a kingfisher if it don’t fish?”
“You might just as well say, how can it be a kingfisher if it don’t fish for kings.”
“No, I mightn’t, sir,” replied Ned, whose illness seemed to have developed a kind of argumentative obstinacy. “Nobody nor nothing does fish for kings, sir, so that’s nonsense. But what I say is, how can that bird be a kingfisher if it don’t fish?”
“But it does fish.”
“No, it don’t, sir; it flits about and catches butterflies, and moths, and beetles. Doctor said it never caught fish at all, and never dived down into the water. So what I say is, that it can’t be a kingfisher.”
“Well, but Doctor Instow says that far away back in the past its ancestors must have lived on fish; and then the land where they were changed, till perhaps it was one like this, with plenty of beautiful little rivers in it, but few fish, and so they had to take to living upon insects, which they capture on the wing, and they have gone on doing so ever since.”
“Seems rum,” said Ned thoughtfully. “Then I suppose if this island was to change, so that there were no more butterflies, moths, or beadles, and more fish took to living in the rivers—they’d take to fishing again?”