SQUAT-DUCK. 407 



upon which it was supposed to feed, would lead 

 me to think that one important purpose that 

 this remarkably constructed organ was applied to, 

 was to move aside the dense vegetation of shal- 

 low pools in which it fed. The habit of this 

 bird was to turn round quick. By this motion 

 it opened out the weeds on the surface, so gra- 

 phically described by Shakspeare as 'the green 

 mantle of the standing pool,' and made a clear 

 space for * swithering with its neb,' as Lincoln- 

 shire decoy-keepers would say. It dived frequently, 

 and the period it remained submerged was prodi- 

 giously long. It swam backward as frequently 

 as forward, and, I apprehend, found its peculiarly 

 made tail a powerful lever in dilating the space 

 behind it. The little garden, in which the bird 

 was kept, that furnished me with these observa- 

 tions, was a fair representation of its natural haunts. 

 Tufts of flowers, composed of lilies, kincalmias, and 

 Indian-shot, with intermixtures of young vegetating 

 bananas, were an apt substitute for the heliconias, 

 nymphseas, cyperaceae, juncales, and marantaceous 

 plants, among which it delighted when wild and 

 at large. It sometimes crept on the bank, and 

 sheltered itself among the bowery herbage; but 

 the clots of damp weed, strewn around its pond, 

 were its favourite resting place when out of the 

 water; and there it sat crouching, not sitting up- 

 right as the Grebe does. In its natural haunts 

 it is occasionally flushed, but its flight is exceed- 

 ingly short, not usually more than from the bank 

 into the mantling herbage of the pond, where it 



