OCCASIONAL NOTES. 293 
Rearina Water OvuzuLs 1x ConFinemunr.—Attempts have frequently 
been made to rear the Dipper, or Water Ouzel, in confinement, but without 
success. Mr. Bartlett, the energetic superintendent of the Zoological 
Society’s Gardens, has on several occasions received the newly-fledged young 
of this bird, and has repeatedly, although unsuccessfully, endeavoured to 
rear and keep them alive. Whether this want of success was owing 
to uncertainty as to the proper food to be administered, or whether the 
peculiar temperament of the bird rendered it unable to brook confinement, 
was for some time doubtful. By trying almost every kind of insect and 
other food, Mr. Bartlett succeeded for a while in rearing the birds; but 
just when his efforts appeared likely to succeed, a change would take place, 
and the birds would die, one after the other. Sometimes they would get 
too wet, and would apparently die of cramp; others that had been kept 
away from the water wasted and died of exhaustion. It was evident that 
he had not discovered a food that suited them. They had been tried with 
the usual food for most inisect-eating birds, such as scraped beef, and hard- 
boiled eggs, ants’ eggs, meal-worms, spiders, flies, beetles, aquatic snails, 
shrimps, salmon-spawn, &c., but all failed, until at the suggestion of his 
assistant, Mr. Arthur Thomson, he tried the experiment of feeding them 
on scalded meal-worms ; it was soon apparent that in this condition the 
meal-worms could be digested, while in a raw or living state (especially their 
tough skins) would pass through the birds in a hard and undigested 
condition. After this experiment, he had little trouble. The birds fed 
greedily upon half-boiled meal-worms, and were soon ready to leave the 
nest. He accordingly fitted up a cage, having the nest under a piece 
of rock-work at one end, and a shallow pan of water at the other, in which 
the birds soon began to dive and swim about. This spring, Mr. Bartlett 
procured from Merionethshire six Dippers from two different nests, and 
under the above treatment they have been successfully reared, and have 
become very tame. Writing under date June 15th to a contemporary, Mr. 
Bartlett says:—‘ They are now about six or seven weeks old, feed them- 
selves or nearly so, being excessively tame, and they still come to be fed by 
hand. Since they have taken to feed themselves, the food has been greatly 
varied by introducing caddis-worms, and other aquatic insects of small 
size, found among the weeds: this affords them much amusement, and 
they throw up castings, or pellets, after the manner of raptorial birds ; the 
pellets consist of the parts of the insects that are not digested. It is most 
interesting to watch their movements, bobbing up and down, flying from 
place to place, and diving under water and extracting the caddis from its 
curious covering. I can no longer doubt that the charges brought from 
time to time against our pets—of appropriating a small portion of the young 
trout or salmon-fry—are true, for they are most expert fishers ; but I feel per- 
fectly satisfied they do not eat the roe or spawn of fish. As I have before 
