246 DIVERS AND THEIR ATTITUDES 



What can be the purpose of this iridiscence this 

 perennial rainbow in which the sea-mouse moves? It 

 cannot be explained, like the gay plumage of birds and 

 the fantastic head-gear of our fine ladies, as amatory 

 machinery, stimulating the ardour of lovers ; for the sea- 

 mouse appears to be sightless, or, at best, to be sensible of 

 no more than the difference of light and dark. Neither 

 will it serve the teleologist as an instance of beauty 

 provided for the delectation of man, inasmuch as the 

 sea-mouse is ' born to blush unseen,' buried in the mud 

 and sand of sea-bottoms. ' They that go down to the sea 

 in ships, these men see the works of the Lord and His 

 wonders in the deep,' and occasionally they bring up a 

 sea-mouse in the trawl; but of landsmen, probably not 

 one in half a million has derived pleasure from contem- 

 plating this puzzling creature a pleasure like that 

 experienced in the contemplation of refined jewellery 

 or rich embroidery. 



LIX 



It has been for long disputed among ornithologists 

 whether grebes and their near allies, the great 

 and their northern black- and red-throated divers, assume 

 Attitudes on j an( j t k e erect attitude in which they are 

 usually represented by artists and taxidermists. Mr. Abel 

 Chapman, if I recollect aright, states in his charming 

 volume on Wild Norway that he took a freshly-killed 

 great northern diver and tried in vain to bring its legs 

 into such a posture as would support the body in the erect 

 attitude so familiar in puffins and guillemots. The joints, 

 he says, would not bend to the requisite angle, whence he 



