Tail-feathers of the Grebes. 473 
I may say at once, that, so far as my researches go, there 
are no Grebes which are absolutely tail-less, though Mr. W. 
L. Selater, relying, no doubt, on previous authorities, in 
speaking of the Podicipedide, states that “the members of 
this family can be always at once distinguished from all 
other birds by their curiously lobed toes and by the absence 
of the rectrices” *. 
Whether Dr. Sharpe, in making the statement that the 
tail-feathers of the Grebes were “ not visible” merely meant 
to imply that these feathers were too small to be distinguished 
from the rest of the body-feathering, or whether he meant 
to imply what Mr. Sclater has definitely formulated, I 
cannot say. But tail-feathers, all the same, are definitely 
present. 
In the Dabchick (Tachybaptes), the only Grebe of which 
I have been able to examine a freshly killed specimen, 
the feathers are not only extremely short, but they are 
also degenerate in character and reduced in number ; 
further, they are peculiar in their relation to the supporting 
pygostyle. 
Semiplumous in character—that is to say, the vanes are 
discontinuous—and not, apparently, exceeding eight in 
number, they are arranged, not in a continuous series, or, 
after the fashion of normal tail-feathers, in a close series 
and lying in the same horizontal plane, but, on the contrary, 
are set in the form of a horseshoe, of which the free ends 
are directed upwards, and so lie alternately in relation one 
to another. 
In the matter of length they are not to be distinguished 
from their respective coverts, and these are barely longer 
than the normal contour-feathers of this part of the body. 
The feathers of Podicipes yriseigena (text-fig. 29, p. 474) 
very closely resemble those of Tachybaptes fluviatilis, but are 
somewhat less degenerate, aud hence I haye chosen to figure 
them here. The only species of Grebe, so far as I have 
yet discovered, in which the tail-feathers have more or less 
completely preserved their normal character—a continuous 
* ¢Fauna of South Africa: Birds,’ vol. iv. p. 508, 
