558 MR. J. S. HUXLEY ON THE 
7. Territories. 
For a general review of the subject, see H. Eliot Howard (13). 
Like most (or all) monogamous birds, each pair of Grebes 
appears to stake out for itself a definite region or territory, 
from which intruders of the same species are jealously driven off. 
The Grebe, however, differs from birds like the Warblers, and 
from the Kingfisher. Such birds live almost exclusively in their 
own territory during the whole of the breeding-season, feeding, 
sleeping, courting, and nesting in it. With the Grebe, on the 
other hand, the territory (to judge from my own experience and 
from certain of Selous’s observations) is a comparatively small 
piece of water in the vicinity of the nest, and therefore near the 
reeds. The open water and the shore, when bare of reeds, is 
‘Common Land,” so that almost all the fishing is free to all. 
And thus, as a matter of observation, nearly all the feeding and 
nearly all the courtship of the birds takes place on this common 
ground. This fits in very well with the fact that all the hostilities 
I have ever seen on open water were apparently always due to 
sex-jealousy. It is only in respect of nesting, of pairing and 
the pairing-ceremonies (and probably of sleeping) that the birds 
restrict themselves to their territories. 
So far as the relation of food and territories go, one might 
draw parallels between birds and man; the affairs of the Warblers 
would correspond to (present-day) agricultural conditions, the 
Kingfisher gives us riparian ownership of fisheries, while the free 
deep-sea fisheries are represented by the common open-water 
of the Grebe. 
8. Swimming Abilities. 
Two feats of skill call for notice. In the first place, I have 
twice seen birds swimming forwards, in a comparatively straight 
line, and apparently with intention, while their heads were tucked 
away under their wings. 
In the second place, I have seen a Grebe, when frightened off 
her nest, dive and swim a good forty yards under water before 
rising, although the water was so shallow that she made a ripple 
on the surface all the time, and so overgrown with reeds that the 
bird’s course had to swerve continually round the obstacles. 
9. Stretching of Wings. 
Every bird-watcher must be familiar with the habit of Cor- 
morants and Shags, of holding their wings out from the body, 
apparently for the purpose of sunning them. I have observed 
this in the Grebe, but curiously enough only in one bird, which 
acted thus twice in ten minutes. It had been preening itself, 
and suddenly, raising its anterior end slightly, it stretched its 
wings horizontally. They were much arched, and showed the 
