1 8 Among the Birds in Northern Shires. 



that the local name of Water-crow has been applied 

 to this bird not only in Cornwall but almost univer- 

 sally in Scotland. The names Water-ouzel and 

 Dipper are of very ancient application. That of 

 "Dipper" was not "apparently invented in 1804", 

 as Professor Newton suggests in his Dictionary of 

 Birds (p. 151), by the author of the letterpress in 

 Bewick's British Birds (presumably Beilby) ; for 

 we find it used many years previously (in 1771) by 

 Tunstall in his Ornithologia Britannica, a work 

 which was reprinted by the Willughby Society in 

 1880 under the editorship of Professor Newton 

 himself! There can be no doubt whatever that 

 the name had been applied much earlier still. The 

 derivation of the words Water-crow and Water- 

 ouzel is not difficult to determine; but that of 

 "Dipper" is open to considerable doubt. To us it 

 seems just as reasonable to presume that the bird 

 received this name from its unique habit of "dip- 

 ping" in the stream as from its singular dipping or 

 bobbing motion when perched on some stone or 

 rock in the bed of the torrent, as is suggested in 

 Bewick's work on British birds. In some parts of 

 the Highlands the Dipper is known locally as the 

 Kingfisher. 



Although we have had not a little experience of 

 the Dipper on the streams of a southern county we 

 are bound to confess that the bird seems somewhat 



