92 
PROCEEDINGS OF SOCIETIES. 
study of the bird in the counties of Wicklow, Waterford, Galway, 
Tipperary, Clare, and Tyrone, have hut confirmed me in, and which 
also, as far as I can learn, have never been fully recorded by any of our 
authorities. 
The general habits of the water ouzel have been so well and so often 
described that they need not detain us ; but although it is now some years 
since M. Herbert announced the fact that this bird is possessed of the power 
of walking under water on the bottom of streams; and although the truth 
of this observation has been strengthened by the evidence of such men as 
St. John, Dilwyn, Bennie, William Thompson, and M‘Gillivray, yet 
still there are found many (especially among the closet naturalists) who 
prefer to ignore the fact altogether, or else assert that this bird’s habits 
in this respect are identical with those of other divers. 
My observations, made repeatedly during many months, and having 
for their object the elucidation of this very point, enable me to corrobo¬ 
rate M. Herbert’s account in every particular, except that the bird car¬ 
ries down a supply of air to the bottom enclosed within its wings, in 
which he most certainly is in error, led away by a -fancied analogy be¬ 
tween the bird and diving beetles, as I have repeatedly seen them rise to 
the surface to obtain air, which they do exactly like a grebe, merely rais¬ 
ing the tip of the bill out of the water. 
The bird has several modes of diving. When seeking food it generally 
goes down, like most divers, head foremost in an oblique direction, or 
else walks deliberately in from the shallow edge of the pool, the head 
bent down, and the knees (tarsal articulation) crouched. When seek¬ 
ing refuge, however, it sometimes sinks like a stone, exactly as the great 
northern diver ( C. glacialis ) has been observed to do—that is, gradually, 
the top of head the last part submerged, without any apparent exertion, 
sometimes in the midst of its most rapid flight dropping down suddenly 
into the water like a plummet. Its course is indifferently with or across 
the stream, rarely against it. 
It often remains under water totally submerged for fifty seconds and 
upwards, and during that time will proceed from ten to twenty yards. 
When it comes out, the water may be seen running rapidly off its plumage. 
It swims with great rapidity, and appears to rejoice in the water as its 
true element, hardly ever alighting directly on a rock, but even after 
its longest flight splashing slap into the water, at the base of the stone 
selected as a resting-place, and then scrambling to the summit of this. 
In its motion in the water it more closely resembles the jackass penguin 
of Cape Horn (Apt. chrysocoma) than any other aquatic bird I have had 
an opportunity of studying. Like that bird (especially in the breeding 
season), the ouzels may be seen at times leaping right out of the water in 
their gambols. 
That the bird actually does possess the power of motion under water, 
the following notes on a wounded bird, made on the spot, abundantly 
prove:— 
“Hov. 29, 1850.—Bohernabreena. Wounded a water ouzel which, 
as I observed them all to do, immediately made for shore. On my going 
