Shufeldt on the Osteology of Cinchis mexicanus. 2 1 3 
NOTES UPON THE OSTEOLOGY OF CINCLUS 
MEXICANUS . 
BY R. W. SHUFELDT. 
It has never been my good fortune to enjoy the opportunity of 
studying the habits and manners of our American Dipper in its 
native haunts, but this seems to have been due more to my ill- 
luck, than to any neglect on my part to seize upon every chance 
to visit the localities where this bird, one that I have so often 
longed to see alive, certainly should have occurred ; I refer to the 
rocky, mountain streams that course down the gorges of the Big 
Horn Mountains and the Laramie Hills. Many a time I have 
scrambled alone up through the rocky canon that marked the bed 
of one of these noisy, bounding torrents with the vain hope of 
finding Cinclus , but, like many a naturalist before me, I was 
obliged to leave the country where these birds undoubtedly occur 
without ever having seen one of them. So that of my own per- 
sonal experience I have nothing to add, so far as its life history is 
concerned, to the many beautiful descriptions of this bird given 
in our standard ornithologies, familiar to all lovers of the science, 
and to those read in its literature. 
Of skins of Cinclus I have examined many a score, as has 
every one who from time to time has gone through large collec- 
tions, but the very nearest, the most intimate acquaintance that I 
can boast of ever having made with this little bird, was with a 
pair and three young that had been stowed away by themselves 
in alcohol for several years in the large collection at the Smith- 
sonian Institution. Of this material I was kindly allowed to avail 
myself, or of so much of it at least as was necessary to develop 
the facts that I now have the pleasure of presenting to my reader 
in this paper. 
I did very little with the viscera, and this part of its anatomy 
has been laid aside for some future study, my attention having 
been directed more particularly to the skeleton, and to the ex- 
tremely interesting points that it presented for consideration. 
These I shall endeavor to describe, as minutely and elaborately 
as the limits of this article will permit, at the same time sup- 
