^68 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



paddling, in the usual way, has become habitual to the bird, I 

 cannot feel sure about. 



After having made the above observations on the Phalaropes, 

 I went to the nest that a pair of Great Northern Divers have, 

 as before mentioned, built, or rather laid down, on the shore of 

 this island. It was a depression which at first seemed to have 

 been formed by the pressure of the bird's body, merely, amidst 

 the grassy herbage of the bank, but investigation showed that 

 some of this had been detached, which implied construction, 

 though of a rude kind. The situation of this nest at once struck 

 me, for here was no shelving shore, as a means of approach to it, 

 but, on the contrary, a perpendicular bank, at least six inches in 

 height, but, I should think, an inch or two more than that. To 

 surmount it, the birds must have made a tremendous leap out of 

 the water, which tallies with what I saw in the case of the pair 

 I watched, though here, so far as I can remember, both the 

 height and the steepness are greater. One cold and bad-looking 

 •egg lay in the nest, which, Sigurdsson said, the parents would 

 have paid no further attention to, after the advent of the first 

 chick to hatch out, with which they would have gone off, almost 

 immediately on that event taking place. He told me that, 

 according to report, this is the common practice of these Divers, 

 however near the unhatched chick may be to leaving the egg, 

 even though it should be chipping the shell. This would seem a 

 strange unnatural habit, but I am inclined to think that the 

 abandoned egg represents that one which, with so many birds, 

 never does hatch, but is addled (as I suppose) from the beginning.* 

 If such be the case, it is perhaps possible that the birds, by 

 their own sensations, may detect the want of life in the egg, or 

 know, from previous experience — which, however, must first have 

 heen gained — that there is never more than one chick hatched. 

 Yet even if the desertion could be thus explained, there would 

 still be the bad egg to account for, so that it seems more probable 

 that the whole matter is under the guidance of some larger and 

 more impersonal law. That, to procure one chick, two eggs 

 should annually be laid, is certainly a waste of energy, and it is 

 therefore interesting, as suggesting that natural selection is in 

 process of getting rid of this waste, that out of the two nests of 



''•'• In this supposition I -^vas correct. See 2^ost. 



