A CURIOUS HABIT. 57 
close to a milldam, but always near running 
water. One I knew of was under a rude bridge 
on Dartmoor, wedged between two granite 
boulders; another by the side of a milldam in 
Cornwall, a third amongst the timbers of an old 
salmon-trap. 
The dippers are most restless and active in 
their habits: ever flitting from spot to spot, 
always on the move, diving into the stream, out 
again—steadfast in nothing but continual change. 
The most singular trait in their versatile cha- 
racter is a power they possess, enabling them not 
only to remain for a long time under water, but 
walk about on the pebbles or gravel at the 
bottom of streams or pools, in search of larve 
and aquatic insects, just as a man in a diving- 
dress seeks for lost treasure round the hull of a 
sunken ship. 
The late and ever-to-be-lamented naturalist, 
Mr. Waterton, thus commented on this most 
curious habit :— 
‘This is the bird whose supposed subaquatic 
pranks have set the laws of gravity at defiance, 
by breaking through the general mandate, which 
has ordained that things lighter than water shall 
rise towards its surface, and that things that are 
heavier shall sink beneath it. If the water-ouzel, 
