278 PERCHERS AND SINGERS 
Strange to say, this bird not only sings in the daytime, 
but there are periods, especially during the breeding season, 
when the male sings at night. 
As usual, man’s destructiveness reaches out for :this the 
greatest of all American singers. Thousands of nestlings are 
caged, the majority of them in Louisiana. Those that do 
not die in the process of rearing live for brief periods in 
wretched little 12 by 14 inch cages, and die without having 
known one happy, joyous hour. It is reported that in most 
portions of the South the Mockingbirds are rapidly de- 
creasing in number, especially in Arkansas. The killing of a 
bird of this species, on any pretext, should be made a penal 
offence. 
THE DIPPER FAMILY 
Cinclidae 
Tue Water Ovzet, or Drrrer,' is one of the most re- 
markable little birds on this continent. It is a genuine 
water elf, and the things it can do are almost beyond belief. 
I first saw it in late November, on the strip of ice which 
fringed the edge of the roaring, swirling, icy-cold water which 
plunges into the Shoshone Canyon at the forks of the Shoshone 
River. Man or beast stepping into that foaming torrent 
would have been crushed against the rocks, and drowned at 
the same moment—two deaths in one. In that grim and 
terrible solitude, fast in the embrace of early winter, we saw 
on the snow-white brink of the ice-bank a tiny dark object, 
which closer inspection revealed to be a bird. It looked like 
a large gray wren. 
1 Cin'clus mea-i-can'us. Length, about 8 inches. 
