
108 GREAT NORTHERN DIVER. 
frequent our waters; and, when the streams are obstructed 
with ice, it departs for the southern States.* In the montlis 
large divers, of which our present species will point out a good example. 
They are all birds of a large size, truly aquatic, are seldom on land 
except during incubation, and though endowed with a considerable 
power, seldom fly, unless very much pressed by necessity. The great 
northern diver is very frequent in the Firth of Forth, and there I have 
never been able either to make up with, or cause one to fly from the 
sea. I have pursued this bird ina Newhaven fishing-beat with four 
sturdy rowers, and, notwithstanding it was kept almost constantly under 
water, by firing as soon as it appeared, the boat could not succeed in 
making one yard upon it. They are sometimes caught in the herring- 
nets, and at set lines, when diving. 
The loons and guillemots approach very near in their characters, except 
in lesser size, and a particular modification of habit in the one preferring 
the sea-shores or the reedy banks of inland lakes for breeding-places, 
while the others are gregarious, and choose the most precipitous cliffs 
on the sea, and deposit their eggs, without the least preparation, on the 
bare rock. The construction of the feet and tarse at once points out in 
the large birds their great facility of diving, and rapid progression under 
water, the proportional expanse of web is much greater, and the form of 
it runs into that of Phalacracoraz and Sula; the legs are placed very 
far back, and the muscles possess very great power ; the tarsus is flat- 
tened laterally, and thus presents a small surface of resistance, and the 
whole plumage of the bird is close and rigid, presenting a smooth and 
almost solid resistance in passing through the water. The adults require 
at least the first season to attain maturity. Dr Richardson mentions 
the following method of shooting them during the winter :—“ They 
arrive in that season when the ice of the lakes continues entire, except, 
perhaps, a small basin of open water where a rivulet happens to flow in, 
or where the discharge of the lake takes place. When the birds are 
observed to alight in these places, the hunter runs to the margin of the 
ice, they instantly dive, but are obliged, after a time, to come to the 
surface to breathe, when he has an opportunity of shooting them, In 
this way upwards of twenty were killed at Fort Enterprise in the spring 
of 1821, in a piece of water only a few yards square.” 
The present species is the only one described in Wilson’s volumes 
as a native of America. Bonaparte mentions two others, which are 
also described in the “ Northern Zoology,”—the black-throated diver, 
Colymbus Arcticus, common in Arctic America, but rare, and only found 
* The loon is said to winter in the Chesapeake Bay. 

