PALLAS DIPPER. 347 
continent. A specimen from the northern countries, communi- 
cated by Mr Leadbeater, first enabled us to introduce it into 
the American fauna; and, almost simultaneously, Mr Swainson, 
in his Synopsis of the birds discovered in Mexico by Mr Bullock, 
announced it as occurring in that country, but in no other part, 
as he thought, of America. Judging from his short descrip- 
tion (and the species does not admit of a long one), we have 
no hesitation in affirming that both Mr Swainson’s and that 
described by Temminck, and supposed to have been found by 
Pallas in the Crimea, are identical with ours, notwithstand- 
ing the localities are so widely distant from each other, as 
well as from that whence ours comes, which, however, it will 
be perceived, is intermediate between them. 
It has been frequently remarked by us (and the fact is now 
well established), that many birds of Mexico, entirely unknown 
in the Atlantic territories of the United States, are met with 
in the interior, and especially along the range of the Rocky 
some projecting stone or stick, or watching by the very edge of the ice, 
whence they drop at once on their prey, consisting now almost entirely 
of the smaller fishes; when successful, they return to the edge and 
devour the spoil. They are most active in their motions during this 
occupation, and dive and return with such rapidity, as to seem con- 
stantly dipping and rising, or, as perhaps better expressed by a quaint 
poet, it 
Comes.and goes so quickly and so oft, 
As seems at once both under and aloft. 
In milder weather, when the river was less choked with ice, I have 
seen them swimming and diving in the centre of the pools, and so 
expertly, that I have mistaken and followed them for the little grebe. 
But in all their activity, I have never been able to see them walk upon 
the bottom, where the depth exceeded a few inches, and I believe it is 
contrary to the habit of any aquatic bird ; the motion has been in all 
cases, like all others, performed by the wings. 
The species of the genus at present stand nominally as follows :—The 
common European Cinclus aquaticus, C. Pallasii, Temm., C. Americanus, 
Swain., C. Asiaticus ?, from India, and the C. septentrionalis and melano- 
gaster of Brehm, mentioned by our author, 
Mr Gould has figured a bird, in his beautiful illustrations of Himalaya, 
under C. Pallasii, which is decidedly different from the American ; but 
I do not see any proof why it should be called C. Pallasiz.—Ep. 
