But the female is of an uniform umber-brown above, has the chin, throat, and upper part of the breast orangebrown, with a few dark streaks, and the rest of the plumage beneath of a hair-brown. The young of both sexes resemble the mother. The Blackbird is found in every country of Europe, even breeding—though rarely — beyond the arctic circle, and in eastern Asia, as well as in Barbary and the Atlantic islands. Resident in Britain as a species, its numbers yet receive considerable accession of passing visitors in autumn, and in most parts of its range it is very migratory. The song of the cock has a peculiarly liquid tone, which makes it much admired, but it is rather too discontinuous to rank the bird very high as a musician. The species is very prolific, having sometimes as many as four broods in the course of the spring and summer. The nest, generally placed in a thick bush, is made of coarse roots or grass, strongly put together with earth, and is lined with fine grass. Herein are laid from four to six eggs of a light greenish-blue closely mottled with reddish-brown. Generally vermivorous, the Blackbird will, when pressed for food, eat grains and seeds, while berries and fruits in their season are eagerly sought by it, thus earning the enmity of gardeners. More or less allied to and resembling the Blackbird are many other species which inhabit most parts of the world, excepting the Ethiopian Region, New Zealand and Australia proper, and North America. Some of them have the legs as well as the bill yellow or orange; and, in a few of them, both sexes alike display a uniformly glossy black. The only other species that need here be mentioned is the Ring-Ousel, Turdus torquatus, which differs from the Blackbird in the dark colour of its bill, and in possessing a conspicuous white gorget—whence its name. It has also very different habits, frequenting wild and open tracts of country, shunning woods, groves, and plantations, and preferring the shelter of rocks to that of trees. Its distribution is accordingly much more local, and in most parts of England it is only known as a transitory migrant in spring and autumn—from and to its hardly as yet ascertained winter quarters. It does not seem to have an extensive range to the eastward, though it has been recorded from Persia.

The Water-Ousel, or Water-Crow, now commonly named the “Dipper,”—a term apparently invented and bestowed in the first edition of Bewick’s British Birds (ii. pp. 16, 17),—not, as is commonly supposed, from the bird’s habit of entering the water in pursuit of its prey, but because “it may be seen perched on the top of a stone in the midst of the torrent, in a continual dipping motion, or short courtesy often repeated.” This, the Cincius aquaticus of most ornithologists, is the type of a small but remarkable group of birds, the position of which many taxonomers have been at their wits’ end to determine. It would be useless here to recount the various suppositions that have been expressed; suffice it to say that almost all ornithologists are now agreed in regarding the genus Cindus as differing so much from other birds that, though essentially one of the true Passeres (i.e., Oscines), it forms a distinct Family, Cinclidae,, which has no very near allies. That some of its peculiarities (for instance, the sternum in adult examples having the posterior margin generally entire, and the close covering of down that clothes the whole body—a character fully recognized by Nitzsch) are correlated with its aquatic habit is probably not to be questioned; but this fact furnishes no argument for associating it, as has often been done, with the Thrushes {Turdidx), the Wrens (Troglodytidae), or much less with other groups to which it has undoubtedly no affinity. The Dipper haunts rocky streams, into which it boldly enters, generally by deliberately wading, and then by the strenuous combined action of its wings and feet makes its way along the bottom in quest of its living prey—freshwater mollusks, and aquatic insects in their larval or mature condition. By the careless and ignorant it is accused of feeding on the spawn of fishes, and it has been on that account subjected to much persecution. Innumerable examinations of the contents of its stomach have not only proved that the charge is baseless, but that the bird clears off many of the worst enemies of the precious product. Short and squat of stature, active and restless in its movements, silky black above, with a pure white throat and upper part of the breast, to which succeeds a broad band of dark bay, it is a familiar figure to most fishermen on the streams it frequents, while the cheerful song of the cock, often heard in the hardest frost, helps to make it a favourite with them in spite of the obloquy under which it labours. The Water-Ousel’s nest is a very curious structure,—outwardly resembling a Wren’s, but built on a wholly different principle,—an ordinary cup-shaped nest of grass lined with dead leaves, placed in some convenient niche, but encased with moss so as to form a large mass that covers it completely except only a small hole for the bird’s passage. The eggs laid within are from four to six in number, and are of a pure white. These remarks refer to the Water-Ousel of central and western Europe, including the British Islands; but, except as regards plumage, it is believed that they will apply to all the other species, about a dozen in number, which have been described. These inhabit suitable places throughout the whole Palaearctic Region as well as the southern slopes of the Himalaya and the hill-country of Formosa, besides the Rocky Mountains and a great part of the Andes. Mr Salvin, in a very philosophical paper on the genus (Ibis, 1867, pp. 109-122), refers these species— some of which are wholly black and one slate-coloured—to five well-marked forms, of which the other members are either “representative species” or merely u local races”; but all seem to occupy distinct geographical areas,—that which is represented in the accompanying woodcut having a wide range along the mountainous parts of North America to Mexico; and it is quite possible that their number may yet be increased, for the general habits of the birds preclude any invasion of territory, and thus produce practical isolation. (a. n.)