3486 The Zoologist — April, 1873. 



that he can dive with facility and walk about at his ease on the gravelly 

 bottom. Now is your time to watch his actions under water, and to judge 

 for yourself. You run quickly towards the spot, but are careful to check 

 your speed and lie down before you reach it, lest you should alarm him 

 prematurely. Again he rises from the burn, rests for a moment on a stone, 

 and soon disappears once more beneath the surface. Now you repeat your 

 former manoeuvre and reach the margin in time, above the very spot wliere 

 he has just plunged into the clear shallow stream, and, looking down, you 

 distinctly see him struggling with violent efforts to reach the bottom, 

 towards which his head and neck are already protruded ; working his wings 

 all the time with considerable exertion and apparent difficulty, quite unlike 

 the comparatively facile movements of a coot or cormorant or any bird of 

 similar specific gravity when in the act of diving. Now he seems to clutch 

 the round pebbles for a few seconds, and to be employed in extracting 

 something from among them ; but the ripple of the current prevents more 

 accurate observation on your part. At last he comes once more to the 

 surface, and, alarmed at your presence, darts along the burn. His flight is 

 as even as that of a partridge, and he presents an easy shot. To satisfy 

 yourself of his guilt or innocence, you — reluctantly — pull the trigger, and 

 he floats lifeless on the stream. Now for the trial. You carefully dissect 

 his crop and stomach and examine their contents, and you discover several 

 larvre of Phryganea) and Ephemerae, minute beetles, and other aquatic 

 insects, and several very small fresh-water snails, but you search in vain for 

 the ova of trout. Such an incident as I have just hurriedly described has 

 occurred to myself repeatedly, and the result of ray observations induces me 

 to believe not only in the harmlessness of this interesting little bird, whose 

 spring song, by the way, is exceedingly melodious, but that instead of being 

 a destroyer of fish-spawn, he really assists in its preservation, by acting as a 

 check on the increase of various predacious water-beetles and other aquatic 

 insects whose ravenous grubs or larva) furnish his Hivourite food. His 

 persecutors are therefore, in my humble opinion, amenable to the double 

 charge of injustice and ingratitude." — P. 150. 



And now I close a book which has given lue so much pleasure 

 that I can do no other than cordially commend it to my readers : 

 it is delightful to contemplate the taste for Natural History thus 

 carried into the decline of life. I could gladly have been spared 

 the "details of death," but the very word "sportsman" implies the 

 love of killing: Mr. Knox has shown us that this can in some 

 degree be mitigated by a taste for Natural History. 



Edward Newman. 



