Liberia <*- 



to hide away in vegetation, seemed to me to aid itself with the 

 outspread wings. Biittikofer doubts whether these birds really 

 dive. On the three or four occasions when I was able to watch 

 a Podica on the Upper Congo, and on tributaries of the 

 Cameroons River, it appeared to me to disappear under the 

 water when conscious of observation — that is to say, that 

 the snaky head moving backwards and forwards (which was all 

 that could be seen of the bird) occasionally ducked under the 

 water. The present writer has never seen any of these birds 

 in flight, but Biittikofer — an accurate observer — states that they 

 fly with reluctance and difliculty, only taking to this method 

 of escape when discovered on the water at some distance from 

 land. Flight under these conditions would seem to make it 

 improbable that they immerse themselves for long, or swim 

 much under water. When flying, Bottikofer observed that they 

 struck the water repeatedly with their short wings, and thus 

 skimmed along the surface till they reached the land, when they 

 scrambled into the vegetation or amongst reeds and trees with 

 considerable agility, their coloration making it easy for them 

 to become concealed from the eye. 



In studying the life habits of this bird, one is reminded 

 several times of a speculative guess thrown out by E. Ray 

 Lankester as to the evolution of birds from a quadrupedal 

 reptilian type. He suggests that the wing arose from the 

 coalescing of three fingers of the hand into a broad, skin- 

 covered, penguin-like flipper, with the clawed thumb left free 

 as it is at present, and further supposes that this may have 

 taken place in a reptilian form which frequented the water 

 a good deal, using its fore-limbs for progression through the 

 water, while the hind-limbs (less specialised) remained free for 

 wading, leaping, and perching. Such an avian type of reptile 

 may have skimmed the surface of the water a good deal, in much 



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