In size this bird equals our well-known Rock Pipit, but may be distinguished by the vinous colour of the throat and breast, by the absence of spots or streaks upon the under parts, and by the outer tail feathers, which are marked with white, as in _A. pratensis_. It was named _spinoletta_ from the provincial name applied to the bird in Italy, whence Linnæus described it.[45] Pallas, however, altered the name to “_pispoletta_,” because Cetti affirmed that this was the correct Florentine term, and not _spinoletta_. Linnæus’s name, nevertheless, on the ground of priority, is entitled to precedence. The species was identified with _aquaticus_ of Bechstein by Bonaparte.[46] This bird seems to have been first made known to English naturalists by Mr. Thomas Webster, of Manchester, who, in a communication to the “Zoologist” (p. 1023), stated that he had seen three birds at Fleetwood in October, 1843, which he had not the slightest hesitation in identifying with a Pipit described by M. Deby as _Anthus aquaticus_, Bechstein, and which to all appearance were totally distinct from the common Rock Pipit of our coast. In January, 1860, the Rev. M. A. Mathew, in a letter to Mr. Gould, called attention to the fact of his having procured a Pipit at Torquay, which was subsequently identified unhesitatingly with _A. aquaticus_ of Bechstein. Since that date, Mr. Gatcombe, of Plymouth, has noticed several other specimens in Devonshire, and a great many have been procured in Sussex, chiefly in the neighbourhood of Brighton. Thus the claim of this bird to rank as a British species has come to be pretty well established. M. Baily, in his “Ornithologie de la Savoie,” says that the Water Pipit is common at all seasons of the year both in Switzerland and Savoy. During winter it frequents the wet meadows, marshes, and unfrozen springs in the valleys, and about the end of March or beginning of April ascends the mountains, and resorts to the most sterile plateaux, fields, heaths, and stony places in the neighbourhood of water, where it nests on the ground under stones, sometimes in clefts in the rock, but oftener in the grass beneath the bilberry, whortleberry, or some creeping bush.