10 
RURAL HOURS. 
early for loons, however, and we may have been deceived. They 
usually appear about the first of April, remaming with us through 
the summer and autumn, rmtU late in December, when they go to 
the sea-shore ; many winter about Long Island, many more in the 
Chesapeake. Not long since we saw one of these birds of un- 
usual size, weighing nineteen pounds ; it had been caught in Seneca 
Ijake on the hook of what fishennen call a set-line, dropped <o the 
depth of ninety-five feet, the bird having dived, that distance to 
reach the bait. Several others have been caught in the same man- 
ner in Seneca Lake upon fines sunk from eighty to one hundred feet. 
It may be doubted if any other feathered thing goes so far beneath 
the water. There is however another, and a much smsller bud, 
the Dipper, or ousel, which is still more at home in the water 
than the loon, and that without being web-footed, but it is prob- 
ably less of a diver. The Dipper must indeed be a very singu- 
lar bird ; instead of swimming on the surface of tie water like 
ducks and geese, or beneath like the loons, or waduig along the 
shores like many of the long-legged coast tribes, it actually nins 
or flies about at will over gravelly beds of mountain streams. Mr. 
Charles Buonaparte mentions having frequently watched them 
among the brooks of the Alps and Apennines, where they are 
found singly, or in paus, haunting toiuents and cataracts Avith 
perfect impunity, or mnning hither and thither along the stony 
bottom of more quiet streams. They cannot swim, however ; and 
they drop suddenly into the Avater from aboA'e, or at times they 
Avalk leisurely in from the bank, flying as it Avere beneath the sur- 
face, moving with distended Avongs. Their nests are said to be 
usually built on some point projecting OA'er a mountain stream, 
either in a tree, or upon a rock ; and the young, Avhcn alarmed. 
