THE MARSHES OF MALHEUR iii 



amoeba. Yet I am; and the race is; but as for 

 the race, I can say, "Go to!" 



So the individual grebe is. The sight of these 

 hundred feverishly pulling dov^n the walls of their 

 nests to cover their eggs was a very human sight, 

 poignant, personal, and not the mechanics of race 

 instinct at all. 



The grebe builds a floating nest out in the 

 open water. All over the bottom of the clear 

 lake, which averaged about four feet in depth, 

 grew the long, trailing, mosslike water-milfoil, its 

 whorled leaves and purple stems giving a faint 

 glow of color to the water as we looked down 

 into it. The grebes dive to the bottom and drag 

 up this milfoil into heaps, or cocks, about six feet 

 across on the bottom. The cocks are barely able 

 to float their tops above the surface. Upon the very 

 peak of this cock they hollow out a nest about 

 the size of a man's hat, building up the walls with 

 dead tule stems until the eggs rest just out of the 

 water, though many of them are partly sub- 

 merged. The nests are usually so close together 

 that their wide bases touch below, but otherwise 

 they are entirely unanchored and at the mercy of 

 wind and wave. 



