WINGS AND FEET 
flops down into the water again. Although it 
would be difficult to prove, it would seem to me 
reasonable to suppose that the compressed 
pointed body of the loon, with the air expelled 
from beneath the flattened feathers, would 
make faster progress by feet action alone, than 
by the wings or by the wings and feet com- 
bined, unless the wings were reduced to the 
proportions of flippers. It is possible that the 
occasional use of the wings observed in these 
birds may be explained by fright, which causes 
them to “ lose their heads,’’ and return to the 
ancestral form of progression, to a reptilian 
scramble so to speak, without increasing the 
speed of their progress. It could also be argued 
that the wings of loons are now so reduced in 
size that their use in emergencies under water is 
a helpand not a hindrance. Experiments oncap- 
tive birds in tanks might determine these facts." 
*The persistent but futile efforts of the loons to rise 
from the water in flight during a calm on the approach of 
the steamer as described in the second chapter is, it seems 
to me, another illustration of the return to primitive 
methods during extreme fright. Aerial flight was doubt- 
less practised by the ancestors of the loons long before 
subaqueous flight, and in stbaqueous flight it is reasonable 
to suppose that quadrupedal action antedated that of the 
feet alone. 
201 
