CHAPTER XII. 



GREBES, LOONS, AND AUKS. 



(Pygopodes: Alcce.) 



O far as my observation goes, it is only the better 

 informed, or else those who have some knowledge 

 of ornithology, apart from professional naturalists, 

 who apply the name " Grebe " to the birds so desig- 

 nated in science. As a rule, the representatives of this 

 family are popularly called " divers " or more often " hell- 

 divers," and sometimes " waterwitches," or " dippers," and 

 the little Pied-billed Grebe (Podilymbus podiceps), probably the 

 best-known form of all the genera, not only has all these names 

 applied to it, but likewise in the vernacular tongue passes under 

 the other ones of " dab-chick," " die-dapper " and the like. 



It is not so very long ago since the present writer paid consid- 

 erable attention to the osteology of these birds as well as to that 

 of many of their relatives, both near and remote. These studies 

 led me to believe that the Grebes have their nearest allies in the 

 Loons, and that they each constitute a superf amily ; the first- 

 mentioned birds forming the Podicipoidea, and the latter the 

 Urinatoroidea. Taken together these two superfamilies form the 

 suborder Pygopodes. In a paper I recently published in London 

 upon this group, I remarked that formerly the Pygopodes were 

 considered by a number. of ornithological systematists to be a 

 group of birds containing but one family the ColymUdw, em- 

 bracing, in this country, at least, all those species known to us as 

 the Grebes and Loons. By some this group was placed in the 

 old order NATATORES, which was created in times gone by, to con- 

 tain nearly every kind of water-bird, from a Flamingo to an Auk. 

 Even as late as 1839 Brandt* included the Penguins in this order, 

 and prior to his day Illiger had associated the Phalaropes with 

 them. Passing by these earlier taxonomies, we find the writers 

 of the later years of the present century removing group 

 after group from this natatorial assemblage, so that at the pres- 

 ent time the majority of avian classifiers place in the order Pygo- 

 podes only the Auks, Grebes, and Loons. Mr. Sclater has com- 

 mitted himself to the opinion that the Pygopodes " seem to form 



* Beitrage zur Kenntiss der Naturgeschichte der Vogel. 



