The Zoologist— April, 1873. 3485 



spawn of the salmon tribe, this bird has probably obtained no enviable place 

 in the following distich : — 



"The Gordon, the guile,* and the water craw 

 Are the three warst ills that Moray ever saw." 



So this innocent bird is ruthlessly slaughtered on the evidence 

 of an old wife's fable, backed by the assertions of an ignorant water 

 bailiff. The burning of witches for impossible acts is happily 

 abandoned : when shall we obtain a little immunity for our owls 

 and our hedgehogs and our goatsuckers, our water ouzels and our 

 swans. It is grievous to find Dr. Gordon writing of the dipper's 

 " known partiality to, and destruction of, the spawn of the salmon 

 tribe"; but let us hear Mr. Knox : — 



"Of the many indigenous birds unjustly proscribed and gradually 

 diminishing in number, the water ouzel or dipper [Clndus aquatmis), appears 

 to me to be the most flagrant example, and I gladly avail myself of this 

 opportunity of recording my belief that he is not only an injured innocent 

 but an ill-used benefactor. For ages he has been condemned as a supposed 

 devourer of trout and salmon spawn, but I am convinced that such a charge 

 has no more foundation in truth than the once popular fables of cows and 

 goats being milked by the hedgehog and the nightjar. I have had many 

 opportunities of observing this bird narrowly, more frequently in Ireland 

 and Wales than even in Scotland, and I may add, though not without a 

 slight pang of remorse, that in the stomachs of the many specimens I have 

 shot and dissected, even when in the commission of the supposed act of 

 larceny, I never could detect any portion of the spawn of either trout or 

 salmon. Let us for a moment watch the manoeuvres of a dipper. The 

 scene shall be one of his favourite haunts, the rocky banks of a mountain 

 burn or the gravelly shallows of a larger stream. Perhaps you are quietly 

 seated among the heather above, resting during the heat of an autumnal 

 noon, and admiring the various colours of the mosses, lichens and Lycopodia 

 that clothe the margin. You are struck by the loneliness of the scene. 

 Nothing living appears to animate it. Suddenly a water ouzel darts by, in 

 swift, even flight, close to the surface, and alights on a flat stone in the 

 middle of the burn lower down. You are no less struck by his beauty — his 

 snow-white breast contrasting with his otherwise dark plumage — than with 

 his attitudes and performances : nodding his head and jerking his short tail 

 after the manner of a wren, and then suddenly plunging into the stream, 

 where you lose sight of him until he reappears on the surface in a few 

 seconds a little lower down, and perhaps resumes his position on the same 

 rock, or flies to a stone nearer the bank. You have probably read or heard 



* The guile is Chrysanthemum Segetum. 

 SECOND SEKIES — VOL. Vin. U 



