Allen’s naturalist’s library. 
1 98 
floating mass of weeds. The one discovered hy 
Mr. Robert Read in Renfrewshire, in 1889, was built, he tells 
me, ‘ amongst the rank herbage of a floating island, although 
the nest was not actually in the water like that of a Little 
Grebe. It contained three eggs, and, though they were about 
a week incubated, they were not covered up.” 
Eggs. 1 hree or four in number. Greenish- while, with a 
chalky covering, but as incubation proceeds they become 
stained, through contact with the decomposing weeds of which 
the nest is made, an ochreous or brown colour. A.xis, 2'i-2‘4? 
inches; diam., i-4-i-55. 
11. IHE RED-NECKED GREBE. LOPH 4 iTHYIA GRISEIGENA. 
Colymbus griseigena, Bodd. Tabl. PI. Enl. p. 55 (1783). 
Podiceps rubricoUis, Lath.; Macgill. Brit. B. v. p. 259 (1832) • 
Seebohm, Hist. Brit. B. iii. p. 459 (1885). 
Podiceps griseigena, Dresser, B. Eur. viii. p. 639, pi. 630 
(1878); B. O. U. List Brit. B. p. 203 (1883); Saunders, 
ed. Yarrell’s Brit. B. iv. p. 124 (1884) ; I.ilford, Col. Fig. 
Brit. B. part xxvi. (1893). 
Podicipes griseigena, Saunders, Man. Brit. B. p. 703 (1889). 
Adult.— General colour above black, with a few remains of 
brown edgings to some of the feathers ; wings blackish, with 
the lesser series white along the carpal bend of the wing; 
primaries black, the secondaries pure white, the innermost beinc^ 
blackish like the back ; tail black ; crown of head and hind^ 
neck glossy-black, with a greenish gloss, the feathers on the 
hinder crown developed into a hood ; sides of face, ear-coverts, 
and throat light slaty-grey, with a streak of white running from 
the angle of the nmuth below the eye, above the ear-coverts 
and skirting the hinder edge of the latter, where the white 
broadens, but does not cross the throat ; lower throat, sides of 
neck, and entire fore-neck, rich chestnut; remainder of under 
surface of body silky white, the sides of the body chestnut, 
with dusky blackish tips to the feathers ; vent brownish ; under 
wing-coverts and axillaries, pure white ; “ bill black, but the 
lower mandible and the sides of the upper mandible yellow at 
the base ; bare space between the eyes and ihc base of the bill 
