132 
GREAT CRESTED GREBE. Curass II. 
These birds frequent the Meres of Shropshire 
and Cheshire, where they breed, and the great 
East Fenin Lincolnshire, where they are called 
Gaunts. Their skins are made into tippets, 
which are sold at as high a price as those that 
come from Geneva. 
This species lays four eggs, white, and of the 
size of those of a pigeon; the nest is formed of 
the roots of buckbean, stalks of water lilly, pond 
weed, and water violet, floating independent 
among the reeds and flags; the water penetrates 
it, and the bird sits and hatches the eggs in that 
wet condition; the nest is sometimes blown from 
among the flags into the middle of the water: in 
these circumstances, the fable of the Halcyon’s 
nest, its fluctivaga domus, as Statius expresses 
it, may in some measure be vindicated. 
Fluctivagam sic sepe domum, madidosque penates 
Halcyone deserta gemit ; cum pignora sevus 
Auster, et algentes rapuit Thetis invida nidos. 
Thebaid. lib. ix. 360. 
It is a careful nurse of its young, being ob- 
served to feed them most assiduously, com- 
monly with small eels; and when the infant 
brood are tired, will carry them either on its 
back or under its wings. This bird preys on 
fish, and is almost perpetually diving ; it does 
