120 
MERTJLIM. 
fully the size of a man’s head, composed externally of moss, 
and placed on the shelf of a rock rising from the river, which 
flowed about seven feet beneath. The aperture was close to the 
base, the thickness of the nest merely being between it and the 
rock ; it was earned so, that from particular points of view only 
could any entrance be observed. This bird breeds in the glens 
around Clonmel;* and apertures in the arches of the bridge, over 
the Shannon at Killaloe, are occupied by its nests.f Thus, where 
there is a deficiency of natural breeding-places, the water ouzel 
can accommodate itself to artificial structures. 
As several authors, to whose works I have referred, differ in 
their descriptions of the colour of the legs of this species, it may 
be remarked, that two mature specimens killed on the 25th July, 
had the entire front (and it only) of the tarsi and upper side of 
the toes of a whitish colour, like the clouded or opaque part of a 
quill ; all the rest was blackish. 
The stomachs of two individuals I examined, in the month of 
December, contained the remains of the larvse of aquatic Coleop- 
tera , and one in January exhibited the fragments of insects only. 
The stomach of one looked to in October was entirely filled with 
the remains of Crustacea, excepting two full-sized dorsal spines of 
a three-spined stickleback ( Gasterosteus ) . A person who has had 
ample opportunities of observing the species, states, that from 
shallow water he has often seen it bring the larvae of Phryganea, 
and break their cases on a stone to get at the contained animal. 
Sir Wm. Jardine, in the second volume of his British Birds, gives 
a full and admirable account of this species, as Mr. Macgillivray 
likewise does in his second volume ; the latter description, how- 
ever, being marred by unnecessary reflections on other ornitho- 
logists. Both these authors state, that they never found the ova 
of fish in water ouzels dissected by them, nor do they think 
that these birds ever seek or use such food, although, from an 
ignorant belief that they destroy the ova of the salmon, they are 
unrelentingly persecuted in some parts of the north of Scotland. 
* Mr. R. Davis. 
f Rev. T. Knox. 
