DIVING BIRDS. 289 



feet, and their inhabiting ponds rank with vegetation 

 rather than the ocean or even the larger lakes, are 

 much more aquatic than the golden-eye; and the 

 rate at which they get on under water would not be 



Golden Eye. 



believed by those who have not actually seen it. It 

 is frog-like, to be sure, from the way in which the 

 feet are worked, and the nearness to which the plane 

 of their action approaches to that of the body, but it 

 more resembles the rush of a bird through the air 

 than the swimming of any ordinary air-inhabitant in 

 the water. Among all the diving birds, from the 

 merganser to the penguin, which, although not the 

 swiftest, perhaps, in the water, is the one which de- 

 pends most exclusively upon aquatic motion, there is 

 not much difference in the feet, so far as can be 

 shown by a figure. The chief distinctions consist in 

 the legs being placed further backward, and the tarsi 

 being shorter and stouter, the more exclusively that 

 the bird is restricted to the motions of swimming and 

 diving. The joints have also more oblique motion, 

 and there appear to be some peculiar muscles upon 



