508 Colymbidce. 



211. BLACK-THROATED DIVER (Colymbus arcticus). 



I think this is one of the handsomest birds when in full- 

 breeding plumage which I have ever seen in a wild state, and I 

 met with it frequently in Norway. The arrangement of black 

 and white feathers, the square and lozenge- shaped spots of pure 

 white on a black ground, the velvet black of the neck, set off by 

 a collar of black and white lines and the pure white of the under 

 surface of the body, combine to give it a most attractive dress 

 though it has no bright colours in its plumage. In all their 

 habits and powers of diving, swimming, and flight, the Divers 

 resemble one another, and all are equally ungainly on dry land, 

 so that ' the peasants of Norway have the somewhat irreverent 

 saying that when first created their legs were forgotten, but sub- 

 sequently thrown after them. This in their eyes accounts for 

 their pedestals being placed so singularly far behind.' It is also 

 believed, in consequence of its difficulty in coming ashore, to 

 carry about its two eggs, each in a hollow which exists for the 

 purpose under either wing, and there, without the necessity of 

 leaving her favourite element, or of climbing on to the hated 

 land, the parent bird hatches out her young in comfort and in 

 security. Another strange fiction in regard to this bird, 

 commonly believed by the Scandinavian peasant, is that when 

 its two eggs are hatched, finding a difficulty in providing for two 

 young ones, it immediately destroys one, and devotes itself to 

 the maintenance of the other. To pass from fable to fact, I 

 found this species many times in Norway on the lakes in the 

 interior, and sometimes in the more retired fjords, but more 

 especially on the lakes of the upper mountain plateaux, the 

 coldness and dreariness of which nothing can exceed, for they 

 never seemed at any time in the summer to be secure from snow 

 and frost and ice and cold biting winds. I suppose it was the 

 solitude and wildness of these lakes which made them so attrac- 

 tive to the Black-throated Divers ; certainly they preferred them 

 to other lakes lower down the mountains, and most certainly 

 they were seldom disturbed there, and very seldom intruded on 



