302 Sex Habits of the Great Crested Grebe. 



thus displaying, brings her the weed, she seizes hold of it, 

 and now the two eat it together. I can have little doubt as 

 to this, for I see none drop on the water, yet it all disappears. 

 During this repast — if I am not really mistaken — the pair did 

 not stand in the water. At most, they may have stretched 

 up, a little, whilst swimming — the male slightly more than 

 the female — but the Penguin pose was not attained to. Here, 

 then, the sexual passes into the gustatory, but this, after all, 

 with food in the bill, is not wonderful. Still, it may be argued 

 that the weed trick began by being, or, even now, is nothing 

 more than, a courting or conjugal presentation of food, by the 

 male to the female, or by each to the other, which would 

 account for the more usual double nature of the performance. 

 But why, in that case, should so ordinary an act be combined 

 with the most salient of all the poses indulged in by this 

 much -posing species, which, however, it must not be forgotten, 

 was absent on this occasion. Why, too, the state of excite- 

 ment in which the birds are clearly seen to be, when thus 

 displaying — or behaving — with the weed in their bills, more 

 especially when held between them ? Why should it so often 

 not be eaten, and why, lastly, later in the season, should 

 apparently this appropriation of weed act as an incitement to 

 coition on the nest ? This I have seen with the present 

 species, and have good reason, at least, to infer in the case of 

 the Horned Grebe also. The weed was not eaten, nor did 

 there seem to be any idea of doing so, on these occasions. 

 Though it is perhaps possible that all this may have grown 

 out of the inter-gifts of dainty morsels, yet, having regard to 

 the fact that the nest is made entirely of weed, thus brought 

 up from the bottom, I am still inclined to see the origin of 

 these actions in the association in the birds' minds between 

 sexual desire and the nest-building instinct, the cause of such 

 association being, as I believe, the growth of the latter out 

 of the former.* Of course, birds, as men, whatever their 

 state of mind, must eat, so that the two things may have no 

 connection with each other. 



Pair 5 (as I think, but, possibly, pair 4 again). — Another 

 instance in which the birds did not stand or even raise 

 themselves, at all, in the water, with the weed in their bills. 

 Both went down, and came up with it, but one first and then 

 the other. The first to do so was the male (some way on the 

 left of the female) more than once, and the first time, at any 

 rate, instead of taking it to the female, he swallowed some or 

 all of it. This, then, may have been mere ordinary feeding. 

 The female, meanwhile, had disappeanxl from tlie scene, 



* My later observations on the conjugal habits of the Dabchick liavo 

 tended greatly to strengthen this view. 



Naturalist 



