500 MR. J. S. HUXLEY ON THE 
bent down along the neck, but held slightly back, the beak hori- 
zontal, still holding the weed. Carrying on with the impetus of 
their motion, the two birds came actually to touch each other 
with their breasts. From the common fulcrum thus formed 
bodies and necks alike sloped slightly back—the birds would have 
fallen forwards had each not thus supported the other. Only the 
very tip of the body was in the water, and there I could see a 
great splashing, showing that the legs were hard at work. The 
appearance either bird presented to its mate had changed alto- 
gether in an instant of time. Before, they had been black and 
dark mottled brown : they saw each other now all brilliant white, 
with chestnut and black surrounding the face in a circle. 
In this position they stayed for a few seconds rocking gently 
from side to side upon the point of their breasts; it was an 
ecstatic motion, as if they were swaying to the music of a dance. 
Then, still rocking and still in contact, they settled very gradually 
down on to the surface of the water; so gradually did they sink 
that I should think their legs must have been continuously 
working against their weight. All this time, too, they had been 
shaking their heads violently at frequent intervals, and after 
coming down from the erect attitude they ended the performance 
by what was simply an ordinary bout of rather excited shaking ; 
the only unusual thing about it was that the birds at the begin- 
ning were still, I think, actually touching each other. The weed 
by this time had all disappeared: what had happened to it was 
very hard to make out, but I believe that some of it was thrown 
away, and some of it eaten by the birds while settling down from 
the Penguin position. 
In their final bout they shook about twenty times, getting less 
excited towards the end ; they eventually drifted apart, put their 
crests down, and almost at once began to pick food off the surface 
of the water. 
Let us call the diving for water-weed and the appearing again 
with it in the bill the weed-trick ; and the rapid swimming to- 
gether, with the subsequent figure erect breast-to-breast, let us 
call the Penguin-dance, for here once more the general resemblance 
to Penguins (exceptionally graceful ones, let us admit) forced 
itself upon the mind. 
(d) One last scene before we pass from mere description to the 
heavier task of analysis. 
Sitting on the bank one day, looking ‘out over a broad belt of 
low flags and rushes which here took the place of the usual 
Arundo, I saw a Grebe come swimming steadily along parallel to 
the bank, bending its head forward a little with each stroke, as is 
the bird’s way in all but very leisurely swimming. I happened 
to look further on in the direction in which it was going, and 
there, twenty or thirty yards ahead of it, I saw what I took to be 
a dead Grebe floating on the water, The body was rather humped 
up; the neck was extended perfectly straight in the line of the 
