THE WATER OUZEL. 119 



selected for nidification, in the neighbourhood of Belfast, three 

 were in the fissures of rocks close to the finest cascades of our 

 mountain streams. One (in 1832) was at the side of the Cave- 

 hill waterfall, the highest in the extensive parish in which the 

 town just named is situated ; the brood duly appeared ; and 

 five or six birds, old and young, were often, through the autumn, 

 seen in company about the place. Another was tastefully built 

 on a niche near the summit of a waterfall of 30 feet in the Crow 

 glen, the rock directly above rising to such an elevation as to 

 render it inaccessible. Here the nest was very large, formed of 

 moss, and of the regular domed structure, upon which the spray 

 from the cascade seldom ceased to beat, the water flowing over 

 the rock being only about two feet distant. This circumstance, 

 however, apparently caused the desertion of the nest, as it was aban- 

 doned before the production of a brood ; it was not completed 

 until the 20th of April, upon which day one of the birds was for 

 some time observed pulling the growing moss off the moist rocks 

 to add to the structure, while the other remained idle at the base 

 of the cascade. During a flood, the water would have fallen in 

 a sheet over the nest, and left it uirinjured. On the 27th of 

 April, in a subsequent year, a nest containing young was ob- 

 served at the side of a rock bordering a mountain stream, above 

 the surface of which it was elevated only a foot ; the lining con- 

 sisted of the dried stalks of grasses, and a few leaves of trees. In 

 the hole of a wall beside an artificial fall of the river Lagan, 

 another was placed. Throughout the breeding season of 1832, a 

 pair of these birds frequented a dark shed erected over a large 

 mill-wheel of nearly forty feet diameter, at Wolf-lrill, where it was 

 presumed they had a nest. Their appearance, perching on the 

 arms of the wheel, and again emerging from this gloomy abode, 

 often caused surprise, more especially when they sallied forth 

 from between the arms of the gigantic wheel in motion, a 

 state in which it was almost constantly. 



The last nest of this species which came under my notice, was 

 observed, at the end of May, 1842, near a cascade of Carnlough 

 river (county of Antrim), above the great fall. It was very large, 



