48 



DISCOVERY 



finally that all this had to be observed through a 

 telescope, it will be understood that mv first feeling 

 was one of bewilderment. 



Gradually, however, order began to come out of 

 chaos. The " Plesiosaur " attitude and the racing, 

 it was found, are used only in the period before mating 

 up ; that is why three (or even four) birds usually 

 participated in them — it is in a sense a competition for 

 a mate. Unfortunately the two sexes are difficult to 

 distinguish. The female is smaller and more delicately 

 built — that is all. Sometimes identification is certain, 

 sometimes almost impossible. However, I can at 

 least say that it is highly probable that such trios 

 might consist of two cocks competing for one hen, or 

 two hens competing for one cock. In any event there 

 is no doubt that they are competitive in the sense that 

 they play a part in the selection of mates ; and no 

 doubt that there is no display of one se.x before the 

 other, but ceremonial and emotional actions identical 

 in the two sexes. The Diver is, so far as I know, the 

 first species in which this has been shown to be so, 

 although I have no doubt that in many birds with both 

 sexes similar the same will prove true. 



The diving and emergence in vertical position is 

 also, so far as I could judge, only used in this first, 

 unmated, period. It seems to be employed more as 

 a definite means of excitation, a display, but again, 

 almost certainly, by either sex. At any rate, in the 

 only two cases, where I could be sure of the sex, the 

 performer was a female. 



A curious psychological fact remains to be men- 

 tioned. It was first noticed by Mr. Elton, another 

 member of our party, that the birds on the lagoon 

 would often immerse part or all of their beaks and 

 sometimes their whole head, as if looking for fish. 

 Later we became puzzled as to why this action so 

 often seemed to be a prelude to courtship ceremonies ; 

 and finally I became convinced that it was, through 

 some obscure mechanism of the brain, definitely 

 associated with them. I had previously found that in 

 the Crested Grebe both the shaking of the head and 

 the strange aimless attempt at preening the wing-tips 

 and tail were similarly associated with courtship 

 actions. We can only suppose that actions, originally 

 neutral, have been seized upon by the forces of sexual 

 selection and used as the raw material of the strange 

 ceremonies of sex. In the Grebe it is quite certain that 

 the commonest form of nuptial courtship action, in 

 which the ruff is spread and the head violently swung 

 from side to side, is simply a specialisation and 

 ritualisation, as one may call it, of the ordinary shaking 

 of the head seen when water-birds preen themselves. 

 It is possible that the curious habit of the Divers in 

 holding their beaks half-immersed during the mutual 

 " beak-dipping ceremony " that I have described, has 



its origin in the holding of the head under water when 

 looking for fish. In any case, we have here one further 

 example of the strange ways in which mental associa- 

 tion works in birds. 



I had almost forgotten to mention that the voice 

 plays an important part in the post-nuptial courtship. 

 Those who know the Red-throated Diver will remember 

 the extraordinary wildness and sense of pain in the 

 bird's mewing, cat-like howl. That we are really 

 reading much of this emotional tone into the cry is 

 shown by the fact that it is used in courtship. Very 

 often as a- preliminary to the beak-dipping ceremony 

 there will be a duet of these wild cries ; and eventually, 

 whenever I heard such a duet — and it was easy to hear, 

 since it carried for miles through the Arctic solitude — 

 I got my glass ready to look at the rite which I knew 

 would follow. Here again we have a ceremony shared 

 mutually by both birds of a pair, but appealing to the 

 ear instead of wholly or mainly to the eye ; and this 

 again is paralleled by the love-duets of the Dabchick 

 and of some species of Owls. 



In these various ceremonies the bright colouring of 

 the birds is shown to the best advantage. In the 

 " Plesiosaurus Race," the drab body is hidden, the 

 lovely pencillings of the back of the neck visible to the 

 hinder birds ; the same is true of the cereuiony with 

 submerged beaks. In the splash-dive, on the other 

 hand, the delicate blue-grey of the rest of the neck, 

 with its rich chestnut throat patch, comes into view ; 

 this it does also, but now with the additional revelation 

 of the whole of the flashing white belly, in the vertical 

 emergence after diving. 



Enough will have been said to show that the Diver's 

 courtship is characterised by strange ceremonies, in 

 which both sexes play an equal part. In conclusion, 

 let me ask anyone who may be in a position to fill any 

 of the gaps in my observations to be so good as to 

 write to me with the information. I shall be most 

 grateful. Especially interesting would be observations 

 on the first period, before mating up, in Great Britain. 



The Renascence of the 

 English Short Story — I 



By Thomas Moult 



The English short story, being the youngest product 

 of literary art, is still regarded with mixed feelings by 

 the average reader of books. Berenice was, we are 

 told, practically the first of its kind in English prose, 

 and because it was written by a master like Edgar 

 Allan Poe (1809-49), an audience must have been 

 automatically created for it. That audience does not 



