ORNITHOLOGICAL OBSERVATION IN ICELAND. 411 



by no means, equally be said of the other two — but this is also 

 in their favour. No, when either Swans' eggs or Divers' eggs 

 disappear in the above-recorded manner, Gulls may be blamed 

 for it, and pass, with Gulls, as an apology, but for my part 



" Timeo Danaos (et) dona ferentes." 



The two Swans, when we first came in view of them, sat one on 

 the nest and the other on the grass, at about the same distance 

 apart as the pair that I had first seen usually were. Our 

 approach, of course, sent them both far afield, and the farmer 

 then rowed us across to the islet, which he seemed to think an 

 absolutely necessary preliminary to my watching any bird upon 

 it. It enabled me, indeed, to locate the Diver's nest exactly, as 

 well as to ascertain a few facts which I could not otherwise have 

 been sure about, but my own methods would have inclined me 

 to dispense with this, and trust entirely to the glasses. The 

 voyage was a very short one, but the boat, as though determined 

 that it should be no whit safer or more comfortable, on that 

 account, leaked to an even more remarkable degree than the 

 one that had previously conveyed me to the Eagles, when the 

 distance had been greater, so that I was equally glad to get out 

 of it, both going and returning. 



After I had been about an hour in the tent, by myself, 

 the two Swans came flying back to the islet. They alighted 

 on the water, just in front of it, and a scene was then enacted 

 between them of a very bizarre and quaint kind. Coming 

 down one behind the other, they both held themselves rigidly 

 upright, their long necks stretched straight up, and their wings, 

 which were only partially spread, pointing a little forward, with 

 their points just touching the water. Then they began to flap 

 them, but constrainedly, as it were, raising them, each time, but 

 very little from the surface of the water, and bringing them down 

 upon it again ; and thus, one behind the other and each the 

 exact duplicate of the other, they flapped and cried in unison, 

 always in the same odd, stiff pose, till, towards the last, before 

 sinking down into usualness, the foremost one turned round, so 

 as to front the other, and they continued thus to flap and cry, in 

 this altered groupage — for there was the same musical note, but 

 I thought it had a less joyful ring in it. It was the oddest 



