AVES—OUZEL. 649 
THE WATER RAIL, OR OUZEL; 

Is a bird well known in the British islands. It is a large slender bird, with 
a black bill, one inch and three quarters long. Its weight is four ounces 
anda half. The upper parts of the plumage are black, edged with olive 
brown, the lower parts ash colored. This bird frequents the banks of springs 
or brooks, which it never leaves; preferring the limpid streams, whose fall 
is rapid, and whose bed is broken with stones and fragments of rocks. The 
habits of the water ouzel are very singular. Aquatic birds, with palmated 
feet, swim or dive; those which inhabit the shores, without wetting their 
body, wade with their tall legs; but the water ouzel, which, it must be re- 
membered, is neither a wader nor a diver, but one of the passerine birds, 
walks quite into the flood, following the declivity of the ground. It is ob- » 
served to enter by degrees, till the water reaches itsneck; and it still advan- 
ces, holding its head not higher tnan usual, though completely immersed. 
It continues to walk under the water; and even descends to the bottom, 
where it saunters as on dry land. M. Herbert, who watched one immersing 
itself in the lake of Nantua, and who communicated the fact to M. de 
Buffon, says, “I perceived several times, that as often as it waded deeper 
than the knee, it displayed its wings, and allowed them to hang to the 
ground. I remarked, too, that, when I could discern it at the bottom of the 
water, it appeared enveloped with air, which gave it a brilliant surface, like 
that on some sorts of beetles, which in water are always inclosed in a bubble of 
air. Its view, in dropping its wings on entering the water, might be to confine 
this air, it was certainly never without some, and it seemed to quiver.” It 
is a curious fact, that even the young ones, before they are quite feathered, 
are able to make their way under water, the same as the older birds. 
These birds are found in many parts of Europe. The female makes her 
nest on the ground, in some mossy bank near the water, of hay and dried 
bres, lining it with dry oak leaves, and forming to it a portico or entrance 
1 Rallus aquaticus, Lis. The genus Rallus has the bill longer than the head, slender 
slightly arched, or straight, cork Hat at the base, cylindrical at the tip 3 mye mandi- 
ble channelled ; nostrils lateral, Jongitudinally cleft in the furrow, half closed by a mem 
brane; legs long and stout, with a small naked spur above the knee; the three anterior 
toes divided ; the posterior articulated on the tarsus ; wings rounded, the third and fourth 
feathers longest. 
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