PODICEPS. 453 



almost as flat as a knife-blade; their wings are small, and their bills 

 generally more or less elongated. Their most obvious peculiarities are 

 the absence of a true tail and the peculiar webbing of the toes ; all of 

 these, including the hind toe, are furnished with lateral lobes, and the 

 middle toe is united to the outer toes by a web at the base. 



The Grebes appear to be all congeneric, so that the geographical distri- 

 bution of the family is the same as that of the genus. 



Genus PODICEPS. 



The Grebes were included by Linnaeus in his genus Colymbus together 

 with the Guillemots and Divers. Brisson very wisely made three genera 

 of this group, calling the Grebes Colymbus, the Guillemots Uria, and the 

 Divers Mergus. These names would doubtless have been accepted by sub- 

 sequent ornithologists had not the latter name been already applied by 

 Linnseus to the Mergansers. Eleven years elapsed and in 1771 Tunstall 

 revised the group, accepting Brisson's name of Colymbus for the Grebes, 

 but uniting the Guillemots and Divers in one genus, Mergus. In 1787 

 Latham took the matter in hand in the ' Supplement to the General 

 Synopsis of Birds ' (i. pp. 296, 297), reinstated Mergus as the generic term 

 for the Mergansers, revived Uria for the Guillemots, and restricted 

 Colymbus to the Divers. For more than a hundred years this arrangement 

 has been accepted with very few exceptions by every ornithologist of note, 

 and right or wrong, rules or no rules, cannot now be set aside. If the 

 rules do not permit of such a course, they must be made to do so (by 

 special exception or otherwise) . Under no possible circumstances can any 

 proposal to transfer the name of Colymbus from the Divers to the Grebes 

 be entertained for a moment. The Pied-billed Grebe, Podiceps carolinensis* 

 (being the Colymbus podiceps of Linnaeus), becomes of necessity the type of 

 the synonymous genus Podiceps. 



It is profoundly to be regretted that Messrs. Baird, Brewer, and Ridgway, 

 in their 'Water-Birds of North America' (ii. p. 425), should have allowed 

 themselves to have fallen into the unpardonable blunder of transferring the 

 generic term of Colymbus from the Divers to the Grebes. If the rules 

 which they have adopted make such a course necessary, they must be 



* Four new genera have been established at different times for the reception of this 

 species, and Sclater and Salvin go so far as to place it in a separate subfamily. There are 

 two reasons for not separating this bird generically : first, genera containing only one 

 species are very objectionable ; and, secondly, that it would involve the use of the name 

 Dytes for the European Grebes, a change of nomenclature which is too revolutionary to 

 be entertained. 



