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XVII. — Observations on the Immer Gdose of 
Zetland. 
By Laurence Edmondston, Esq, 
(Read 6tk April 1822.) 
JL HERE are few birds to which anomalous and perverted 
instincts have been more ascribed than to the Colymbus 
Immer. It has been represented as incapable of flying,— 
as crossing boisterous oceans merely by swimming,- — ^as 
hatching its egg under its wing, or forming its nest on the 
surface of the water. And nothing more clearly demon- 
strates the necessity of investigating patiently the habits of 
birds in their native retreats, than the fact of the singular 
improbabilities that have so long been mingled with our 
information of a species which, from its number and gene- 
ral dijffusion, ought long since to have been correctly 
known. 
The erroneous and fanciful opinions which relate to this 
species, seem to have been delivered either on obscure or 
credulous authority, or as loose assertions unsupported by 
