258 BRITISH BIRDS. 
When I was in the Pyrenees last winter we visited Pierrefitte, where 
the valley divides into two gorges. We took the one leading to Baréges. 
The sun was burning hot ; but there was hoar-frost and ice in the shade. 
The gorge is very fine: sometimes there is a little grassy land near the 
rocky river; but in other places the valley becomes narrower, and for a 
long distance is only a ledge which has been blasted out of the steep 
sloping rock, and you can look down a couple of hundred feet and see the 
river boiling and roaring in the chasm below. The gorge is well timbered, 
shrubs and trees even growing in the crevices of almost perpendicular 
rocks. In winter it is not easy to see what the trees are; but oaks and 
chestnut seemed to abound, and the abundance of misseltoe was very 
striking. We noticed a quantity of juniper and box-trees in the under- 
wood, whilst high up near the mountain-tops the sombre pine-forests 
looked almost black against the snow. This gorge was a paradise for 
Dippers ; almost every hundred yards we came upon a pair. We watched 
them chasing each other up and down the river and screaming almost like 
Swifts. More often they were conspicuously perched upon a rock in the 
stream, perpetually dipping down their heads and jerking up their tails. 
Several times we watched them wading in the shallow water or swimming 
and diving in the deeper pools. Now and then they perched on the 
mossy banks and seemed to fly up and catch insects on the overhanging 
moss. 
Doubtless from the peculiar manner in which the Dipper seeks its food, 
and the situations in which it is chiefly found, the bird has gained much 
of its reputation as an enemy to the ova of the salmon and the trout. The 
Dipper is seen to enter the stream, to disappear beneath the surface, and 
explore what are well known to be the breeding-grounds of these fish ; 
and hence it is very easy to see why the bird has fallen into such bad 
repute with the ignorant pisciculturist and the bigoted angler. Not 
taking the trouble to seriously investigate the matter, they at once set 
down the poor Dipper as the enemy of the ova and fry, and persecute 
him accordingly—a fate that befalls too many harmless animals. But 
instead of being the fish-preserver’s enemy, he is in fact one of his 
firmest friends. His food consists of various creatures which, in their 
larval stages of development, are themselves the greatest enemies to the 
ova. His journeyings to the bed of the stream are for the purpose of 
obtaining the caddis-worms, water-beetles, and various species of small 
mollusca and insects found amongst the moss-grown pebbles and sandy 
bed of the waters, and occasionally a small fish. He also obtains some 
portion of his food on the marshy banks of the stream, such as worms 
and grubs and, more rarely, the seeds of various grasses, 
From what evidence it is possible to obtain on the subject, it is most 
probable that the Dipper is a life-paired bird, and either frequents each 
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