SEPTEMBER 247 



argued that it was an anatomical impossibility for the 

 living bird to stand in such a posture. 



The late Lord Lilford had more opportunities than 

 most men of sustained observation of the habits and 

 attitudes of birds in his unrivalled aviary, and it is to 

 be noted that in his beautiful Figures of British Birds 

 (the best portrait-gallery of the British avifauna ever 

 produced) Mr. Thorburn has carefully avoided repre- 

 senting the divers and grebes on dry land, with a single 

 exception the great crested grebe. In the plate of that 

 species a pair of birds are depicted, one swimming, the 

 other ashore, not erect, but crouching low with breast and 

 belly on the sand. 



Since the controversy was started, I have pretty con- 

 stantly been on the watch to solve it, and have at last 

 succeeded, at least to my own satisfaction. Owing to 

 the wooded nature of most of the shores of the sanctuary 

 lake, and the reed-girdle round the rest of it, I have never 

 till yesterday (September 1904) managed to view the 

 great crested grebes except when they were afloat. But 

 last evening I caught sight of an erect object gleaming 

 white on the shingle under a thicket of sallows. It was 

 on the far shore, fully five hundred yards away, but the 

 light was good, and the glass revealed the bird to be a 

 grebe in the conventional attitude aforesaid, vigorously 

 preening its plumage, as it is the practice of grebes 

 to do more incessantly, I think, than almost any other 

 kind of bird. It remained so until, wishing to get a 

 nearer view, I approached it in a boat, when it dropped 

 into the water and joined two young grebes that were 

 disporting themselves not far oft'. As this question about 

 the attitude of the Colymbiformes has been so hotly 



