150 meruliDjE. 



some paces in advance, it was amusing to see two ring-ouzels pur- 

 suing him, and approaching so near as to strike the air violently 

 within a few inches of his head ; their loudest cries being at the 

 same time uttered. Many an earnest and expressive look the dog 

 gave towards me, as if desirous of advice in his extremity, but 

 finding it in vain, he at length ran up to me, when the birds, 

 nothing daunted, followed, and gave myself as well as two friends 

 who were with me, the same salute, flying so near that we could 

 almost have struck them with our hands. At the beginning of 

 the onset, a female bird appeared, as if inciting the males forward, 

 and continued until they attained the highest pitch of violence, 

 when like another heroine, she retired to a commanding eminence 

 to be " spectatress of the fight/' Had these birds been a pair 

 protecting their young, or assuming similar artifice to the lapwing 

 in withdrawing attention from its nest, (in which the ring-ouzel 

 is said to be an adept,) the circumstance would be unworthy of 

 notice, but the assailants were both male birds in adult plumage. 

 The chase of the dog was continued a considerable way down the 

 glen, and for about fifteen or twenty minutes. There were two 

 or three pair there in that season, and one of their nests containing 

 four eggs was discovered ; it was artfully placed beneath an over- 

 hanging bank, whose mosses, growing naturally, concealed those 

 of which the nest was composed from ordinary view. The usual 

 building site is on the ground, and generally on the side either of 

 the shelving or precipitous banks of our mountain-streams. 



Throughout Ireland m similar localities to those already 

 noticed, we have met with the ring-ouzel from April to October, 

 as in "The Glens," Glenariff, &c, about Cushendall in Antrim; 

 about Rosheen mountain, and Lough Salt in Donegal ; at the 

 head of the ravine between Sleive Donard, — the loftiest of the 

 mountains of Mourne in Down, rising nearly three thousand 

 feet above the sea, which washes its base, — and the mountains 

 to its north-west; on the heights of Carlingford mountain 

 in Louth, where the beautiful flowers of the rare Rhodiola 

 rosea at the same time met the eye; about Achil Head, one 

 of the most westerly points of Mayo ; and on the high rocky lulls 



