Sanitary Details 379 



alighted near at hand, in order to dabble their beaks in the 

 stream, after leaving the nest, although they never made 

 any attempt to remove the droppings of the young, as is 

 common with many birds. When the young wished to 

 relieve themselves, they backed up to the edge of the 

 entrance hole, so that most of the excrement fell on the 

 side of the stone, and made a very considerable mark there. 

 In most nests, their situation ensures that this will fall into, 

 and be carried off by, the running water, so that the parents 

 are saved the trouble of attending to sanitary details. 



On the Lliw there was a Dipper's nest in a hole in a 

 gravel bank that might have suited a kingfisher, or a sand 

 martin. It was about a couple of feet from the entrance, 

 and, of course, quite invisible, and consisted only of a cup- 

 shaped lining of leaves, no moss roof being either necessary, 

 or practicable, in the confined space. Several other nests, 

 here, were unusually well concealed ; one of them in a hole, 

 in a grassy bank, on one of the small streams that fall into 

 the lake ; another so far up a stone drain, not more than 

 two feet high, which runs beneath the turnpike near " The 

 Big Stone Pool," on the Little Dee, as to be neither visible, 

 nor get-at-able, to anybody but a small boy, and that only 

 a very determined one. Elsewhere, I have seen an occasional 

 nest against the moss-covered trunk of an old oak tree 

 hanging athwart the stream, and twelve or fifteen feet above 

 the water ; as well as on a cliff five or six times as far above 

 the ground. 



The Big Stone Pool just referred to is sufficiently de- 

 scribed by its name, a huge lump of lava rock having blocked 

 the course of the stream, a mile or so above the village. 

 The local name is Carreg Lynaw, or the " Swallowing 

 Stone," because of a superstition that it swallowed up 

 naughty children ; and not so long ago (if indeed the practice 

 is yet dead out) it used to be common for mothers, or 

 nurses, to obtain obedience from their charges by threaten- 

 ing, unless they were good, to let the Stone swallow them. 



The old belief, which credited the Dipper with the extra- 

 ordinary power of being able to walk about at the bottom 

 of a stream, no doubt arose from the peculiar manner in 



