AVES— OUZEL. 649 



THE WATER RAIL, OR OUZEL, 1 



Is a bird well known in the British islands. It is a large slender bird, with 

 a black bill, one inch and three quarters long. Its weight is four ounces 

 and a half. The upper parts of the plumage are black, edged with olive 

 brown, the lower parts ash colored. This bird frequents the banks of springs 

 or brooks, which it never leaves ; preferring the limpid streams, whose fall 

 is rapid, and whose bed is broken with stones and fragments of rocks. The 

 habits of the water ouzel are very singular. Aquatic birds, with palmated 

 feet, swim or dive ; those which inhabit the shores, without wetting their 

 body, wade with their tall legs ; but the water ouzel, which, it must be re- 

 membered, is neither a wader nor a diver, but one of the passerine birds, 

 walks quite into the flood, following the declivity of the ground. It is ob- 

 served to enter by degrees, till the water reaches its neck; and it still advan- 

 ces, holding its head not higher than usual, though completely immersed. 

 It continues to walk under the water; and even descends to the bottom, 

 where it saunters as- on dry land. M. Herbert, who watched one immersing 

 itself in the lake of Nantua, and who communicated the fact to M. de 

 Buffon, says, " I perceived several times, that as often as it waded deeper 

 than the knee, it displayed its wings, and allowed them to hang to the 

 ground. I remarked, too, that, when I could discern it at the bottom of the 

 water, it appeared enveloped with air, which gave it a brilliant surface, like 

 that on some sorts of beetles, which in water are always inclosed in a bubble of 

 air. Its view, in dropping its wings on entering the water, might be to confine 

 this air, it was certainly never without some, and it seemed to quiver." It 

 is a curious fact, that even the young ones, before they are quite feathered, 

 are able to make their way under water, the same as the older birds. 



These birds are found in many parts of Europe. The female makes her 

 nest on the ground, in some mossy bank near the water, of hay and dried 

 fibres, lining it with dry oak leaves, and forming to it a portico or entrance 



i Rallus aquaticus, Lin. The genus RaUus has the bill longer than the head, slender 

 slightly arched, or straight, compressed at the base, cylindrical at the tin ; upper mandi- 

 ble channelled ; nostrils lateral, longitudinally cleft in the furrow, half closed by a mem 

 brane ; legs long and stout, with a small naked spur above the knee ; the three anterior 

 toes divided ; the posterior articulated on the tarsus ; wings rounded, the third and fourth 

 feathers longest. 



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