2 1 8 love's meinie. 



question which would need the skinning of a 

 bird in a diagram to answer — about the " air- 

 passages, which are a kind of supplementary 

 lungs." Thinking better of it, and leaving the 

 bird to breathe in its own way, I do wish we 

 could get this Dipper question settled, — for 

 here we are all at sea — or at least at brook, 

 again, about it : and although in a book I 

 ought to have examined before — Mr. Robert 

 Gray's ' Birds of the West of Scotland,' which 

 contains a quantity of useful and amusing 

 things, and some plates remarkable for the 

 delicate and spirited action of birds in groups, 

 — although, I say, this unusually well-gathered 

 and well-written book has a nice little litho- 

 graph of two dippers, and says they are quite 

 universally distributed in Scotland, and called 

 ' Water Crows,' and in Gaelic ' Gobha dubh 

 nan allt,' (which I'm sure must mean something 

 nice, if one knew what,) and though it has a 

 lively account of the bird's ways out of the 

 water — says not a word of its ways in it ! 

 except that "dippers everywhere delight in 

 deep linns and brawling rapids, where their 

 interesting motions never fail to attract the 

 angler and bird-student ; " and this of their 



