AN ESSAY ON BIRD-MIND 119 



action : she dives, and attacks the strange hen after 

 the fashion of Grebes, from below, with an under- 

 water thrust of the sharp beak in the belly. Whether 

 the thrust ever goes home I do not know. Generally, 

 I think, the offending bird becomes aware of the danger 

 just in time, and, squawking, hastily flaps off. The 

 rightful mate emerges. What does she do now ? 

 Peck the erring husband ? Leave him in chilly 

 disgrace ? Not a bit of it ! She approaches with 

 an eager note, and in a moment the two are hard at 

 it, shaking their heads ; and, indeed, on such occasions 

 you may see more vigour and excitement thrown into 

 the ceremony than at any other time. 



Again we exclaim, how human ! And again we 

 see to what a pitch of complexity the bird's emotional 

 life is tuned. 



It will have been observed that in the Grebe, whose 

 chief skill lies in its wonderful powers of diving, these 

 powers have been utilized as the raw material of several 

 of the courtship ceremonies. This pressing of the 

 everyday faculties of the bird into the service of emotion, 

 the elevation and conversion of its useful powers of 

 diving and underwater swimming into ceremonials 

 of passion, is from an evolutionary point of view 

 natural enough, and has its counterparts elsewhere. 

 So in the Divers, not too distant relatives of the Grebes, 

 swimming and diving have their role in courtship. 

 Here too the thrilling, vertical emergence close to the 

 mate takes place ; and there is a strange ceremony 



