THE WATER-OUZEL. 41 



2Oth of May, when my clerk and assistant, Mr. Arthur 

 Thomson, who had taken as much interest in rearing these 

 birds as myself, hit upon the idea of scalding the meal- 

 worms, and tried it. It was soon apparent that in this 

 condition the meal-worms could be digested, while in a 

 raw or living state they (especially their hard skins) 

 would pass through the birds in a hard and undigested 

 condition. From this moment we had but little trouble. 

 The birds fed greedily upon the half-boiled meal-worms, 

 and we soon found them ready to leave the nest, and 

 accordingly fitted up a cage, having the nest under a rock 

 in one corner and a shallow pan at the other end of the 

 .cage, in which the birds soon began to dive and swim 

 about. They are now about six or seven weeks old, feed 

 themselves, or nearly so, being excessively tame, and. they 

 still come to be fed by hand. Since they have taken to 

 feed themselves the food has been greatly varied by in- 

 troducing caddis-worms and other aquatic insects of small 

 size found among the weeds ; this affords them much 

 amusement, and they throw up castings, or pellets, after 

 the manner , of raptorial birds. The pellets consist of the 

 parts of the insects that are not digested. It is most 

 interesting to watch their movements, bobbing up and 

 down, flying from place to place, and diving under water 

 and extracting the caddis from its curious covering. I 

 can no longer doubt the charges brought from time to 

 time against our pets of appropriating a small portion of 

 the young trout or salmon, for they are most expert fishers ; 

 but I feel perfectly satisfied they do not eat the roe or 

 spawn of fish. As I have before stated, unless there is 

 some movement, these birds do not eat anything they find. 

 In diving, the dipper uses its wings as though it was flying 

 under water, and has to exert considerable force to remain 

 under long enough to capture its food ; it is so buoyant 

 that it floats to the surface like a cork. The song of the 

 water-ouzel is said to be louder, but in other respects much 

 resembles the wren. Our young birds already give indi- 

 cations of their vocal music. I can find no very correct 

 description of the movements of the dipper; I take, there- 



