ANIMAL INSTINCTS.

Patea Mail, 18 March 1882, Page 1 (Supplement)

ANIMAL INSTINCTS.

The Dipper or "Water-ousel is well known to ornithologists as one of the most curious and interestiong of British birds. Its special habitat is clear mountain streams. These it never leaves, except to visit the lakes into which or from which they flow. Without the assistance of webbed feet, it has extraordinary powers of swimming and diving—moving about upon and under the surface with more than the ease and dexterity of a fish, hunting' along the bottom as if it had no power to sink, now diving where the stream is smooth, now where it is quick and broken, and suddenly reappearing perched on the summit of some projecting point. Its plumage is in perfect harmony with its haunts —dark, with a pure white breast, which looks exactly like one of the flashes of light so numerous in rapid streams, or one of the little balls of foam which loiter among the stones. Its very song is set to the music of rapid waters. From the top of a bank one can often get get quite close to it when it is singing, and the harmony of its notes with the tinkling of the stream is really curious. It sings, too, when all other birds but the robin are silent —when the stones on which it sits are circled and rimmed with ice. No bird, perhaps, is more specially adapted to a very special home and very peculiar habits of life. The same species, or other forms so closely similar as to seem mere varieties, are found in almost every counjfcry of the world where there are mountain streams. And yet it is a species having

no very near affinity with any other bird, and it constitutes by itself a separate genus. It is therefore a species of great interest to the naturalist, and raises some of the most perplexing questions connected with the “ origin of species.” _ In 1874 a pair of birds built their nests at Inveraray, in a hole in the wall of a small tunnel constructed to carry a rivulet under the walks of a pleasure ground. The season was one of great drought, and the rivulet during the whole time of incubation and of the growth of the young in the nest, was nearly entirely dry. One of the nestlings, when almost fully fledged, was taken out by the hand for examination, an operation which so alarmed the others that they darted out of the hole, and ran 'and fluttered down the tunnel towards its mouth. At that point a considerable pool of water had survived the drought and lay in the paths of the fugitives. They did not at all appear to seek it; on the contrary, their flight seemed to be as aimless as that of any other fledgling would have been in the same predicament. But one of them stumbled into the pool. The effect was most curious. When the young bird touched the water, there was a moment of pause, as if the creature were surprised. Then instantly there seemed to wake within it the sense of its hereditary powers. Down it dived with all the facility of its parents, and the action of its wings under the water was a beautiful exhibit tion of the double adaptation to progression in two very different elements which is peculiar to the wings of most of the diving birds. The young Dipper was immediately lost to sight among some weeds, and so long did it remain under water that I feared it must be drowned. But in due time it reappeared all right, and being recaptured, was replaced in the nest. —Duke of Argyll, in Contemporary 'Review.