WINGS AND FEET 



/ 



flops down into the water again. Although it 

 would be difficult to prove, it would seem to me 

 reasonable to suppose that the compressed 

 pointed body of the loon, with the air expelled 

 from beneath the flattened feathers, would 

 make faster progress by feet action alone, than 

 by the wings or by the wings and feet com- 

 bined, unless the wings were reduced to the 

 proportions of flippers. It is possible that the 

 occasional use of the wings observed in these 

 birds may be explained by fright, which causes 

 them to " lose their heads," and return to the 

 ancestral form of progression, to a reptilian 

 scramble so to speak, without increasing the 

 speed of their progress. It could also be argued 

 that the wings of loons are now so reduced in 

 size that their use in emergencies under water is 

 a help and not a hindrance. Experiments on cap- 

 tive birds in tanks might determine these facts. 1 



persistent but futile efforts of the loons to rise 

 from the water in flight during a calm on the approach of 

 the steamer as described in the second chapter is, it seems 

 to me, another illustration of the return to primitive 

 methods during extreme fright. Aerial flight was doubt- 

 less practised by the ancestors of the loons long before 

 subaqueous flight, and in subaqueous flight it is reasonable 

 to suppose that quadrupedal action antedated that of the 

 feet alone. 



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