214 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
then imagine old Pepys’ feelings, had such an exchange been 
proposed to him ! 
The female, after this, swam halfway up the loch by her- 
self, and then, a little after 12.30, flew off it, leaving the male 
and one chick swimming together in the bay. About 3.5 the 
female returns, but unfortunately, though I was looking at 
the male and chick, a moment or two before, I miss both her 
arrival and probable feeding of the latter, only seeing her just 
after this. 
At 3.20 the male flies away. 
44.8.—Male returns, his wings making a sonorous swish as 
he slants down, holding them raised and steadfast. He carries a 
fish which looks like a small herring—about twice the size of a 
Cornish pilchard or “‘ sardine””—and, swimming to the chick, the 
latter takes it from his bill. 
I have now watched the two birds for half an hour, at a fair 
distance, with and without the glasses, in sun and shade, and 
can say that the neck—using the word inclusively—is a most 
conspicuous feature, without any quality of ‘‘ concealing colora- 
tion” that I can discover, and that the red, or deep chestnut-red 
mark, on the throat, is so far from this that it looks as though 
the bird’s throat were cut, and streaming, or rather suffused, with 
blood. It is not, indeed, blood-colour, but sufficiently near it to 
suggest this, and almost as lurid. The bird that I take to be 
the male is the more ornate, as well as the larger of the two. 
The white of his throat, under the chestnut, is more brilliant 
and strikingly contrasted with the latter, and the chestnut itself 
deeper, though, perhaps for this reason, not of quite so bright 
a tint. It seems, however, to be a step or two farther on the 
road of its natural development. 
The notes of this date—viz. July 30th—appear to be the last 
that I made on this pair of Divers. I can find in them no entry 
of having found one of the chicks lying dead on the bank of the 
loch, in the neighbourhood of the place where it (assuming it to 
have been the same one) had been accustomed to sit; yet it is 
clearly impressed upon my memory that I did so find it. In 
fact, I remember it so distinctly, with the feeling of regret which 
the discovery produced, as also that there were no marks of 
violence on the body, but only of emaciation or meagreness, that 
