OUSEL 667 
young of both sexes resemble the mother. The Blackbird is found 
in every country of Europe, even breeding—though rarely—beyond 
the arctic circle, and in eastern Asia, as well as in Barbary and the 
Atlantic islands. Resident in Britain as a species, its numbers yet 
receive considerable accession of passing visitors in autumn, and in 
most parts of its range it is very migratory. The song of the cock 
has a peculiarly liquid tone, which makes it much admired, but it 
is too discontinuous to rank the bird very high as a musician. The 
species is very prolific, having sometimes as many as four broods in 
the course of the spring and summer. ‘The nest, generally placed 
in a thick bush, is made of coarse roots or grass, strongly put 
together with earth, and is lined with fine grass. Herein are laid 
from four to six eggs of a light greenish-blue closely mottled with 
reddish-brown. Generally vermivorous, the Blackbird will, when 
pressed for food, eat grains and seeds, while berries and fruits in 
their season are eagerly sought by it, thus earning the enmity of 
gardeners. More or less allied to and resembling the Blackbird are 
many other species which inhabit most parts of the world, except 
ing the Ethiopian Region, New Zealand and Australia proper, and 
North America. Some of them have the legs as well as the bill 
yellow or orange ; and, in a few of them, both sexes alike display a 
uniformly glossy black. The only one that need here be particu- 
larized is the RinG-OUSEL, Turdus torquatus, which is at once dis- 
tinguishable from the Blackbird by its conspicuous white gorget— 
whence its name. It has also very different habits, frequenting 
wild and open tracts of country, shunning woods, groves and planta- 
tions, and preferring the shelter of rocks to that of trees. Its dis- 
tribution is accordingly much more loeal, and in most parts of 
England it is only known as a transitory migrant in spring and 
autumn —from and to its hardly as yet ascertained winter 
quarters.! 
The WaAvTER-OUSEL, or Water-Crow—now commonly named the 
“ Dipper ”—is the Cinclus aquaticus of most ornithologists, and the 
type of a small but remarkable group of birds, the position of 
which many taxonomers have been at their wits’ end to determine. 
It would be useless here to recount the various suppositions that 
have been expressed ; suffice it to say that most ornithologists are 
now agreed in regarding the genus Cinclus” as differing so much 
1 The Ring-Ousel of central and southern Europe presents several differences, 
having most of its feathers edged with white, and is regarded by some authorities 
(Stejneger, Proc. U.S. Nat. Mus. 1886, pp. 365-372 ; Salvadori, Boll. Mus. Zool. 
Torino, viii. No. 152) as a distinct species, 7. alpestris (Brehm); but Mr. 
Seebohm says (Jbis, 1888, pp. 310, 311) that intermediate forms occur, and that 
further to the eastward, as in Caucasia and Persia, examples shew a still greater 
divergence, forming a local race to which he applies the name orientalis. 
2 Some writers have used for this genus the name Hydrobata. 
