726 LITTLE GREBE. 
from 4-6 eggs, rather pointed at both ends, are deposited between 
April and August ; two clutches being often produced in the season. 
Their colour is creamy-white, until stained adventitiously ; and 
their measurements are 1°5 by 1in. The sitting bird, on leaving 
the nest, almost always covers them with weeds, which are plucked 
by the bill with astonishing rapidity. Incubation lasts about 
20 days. The food is usually small fish, insects and vegetable 
matter, but in winter marine animals are often consumed. Like 
other Grebes, this species swallows feathers; it also carries its 
young on its back, as described in the cases of the Great Crested 
and Slavonian Grebes. Prof. Newton has stated (Ibis 1889, p. 577) 
that a bird which could not have been more than twelve hours old, 
crawled upon and crossed a table from side to side, dragging itself 
forward by means of its wings quite as much as impelling itself by 
its legs. The note of the old bird is a whit, wit. 
The adult male in spring (represented swimming in the foreground) 
has the head, neck and upper parts dark brown ; very little white on 
the secondaries ; chin black ; cheeks, throat and sides of the neck 
reddish-chestnut ; under-parts chiefly greyish-white ; flanks dusky- 
brown ; bill horn-colour, yellowish-green at the gape ; irides reddish- 
brown ; legs and toes dull green. Length 9°5; wing nearly 4 in. 
The female is slightly smaller. In winter the chin is white, and the 
head and neck are clove-brown, the general colour being paler. 
The young are still duller in tint, with dusky streaks on the sides of 
the head. 
In ‘ Research’ for January 1st 1889, Mr. R. Newstead, curator of 
the Chester Museum, called attention to some interesting points in 
the anatomy of this Grebe and some others. The fibula is not 
fused to the tibia, but is connected with it along the whole length 
by a very strong ligament, so that by taking hold of the foot the 
tibia can be made to rotate ; while there is a perforated and grooved 
bone at the back of the tarso-metatarsus, which has three perforations 
and carries eight tendons. Diagrams illustrative of the above were 
kindly sent to me by Dr. W. H. Dobie, of Chester. 
An example of the American Pied-billed Grebe (Podilymbus 
podictfes)—so young that it exhibited longitudinal stripes on the 
neck—was exhibited by Dr. R. Bowdler Sharpe at the meeting of 
the Zoological Society of London on June 21st 1881, and was 
stated to have been killed near Weymouth in the previous January. 
There had probably been an accidental exchange of specimens by 
the dealer, for he sold the bird as merely a Little Grebe. 
