86 
THE WINGS. 
water, their food consisting entirely of the fish they 
are enabled to catch, by diving after them with 
greater speed than the fish can swim. Here it is 
evident, a long wide-spreading wing, like the Swift’s, 
would be very inconvenient ; accordingly in birds of 
this tribe, we find the wings much smaller, and so 
formed that they can be used as oars or fins, which 
in one division of the Penguin tribe they very much 
resemble, the short feathery covering upon them 
having much the appearance of scales. Of the true 
Penguins we have none in this country, but we have, 
however, many species even in England, which live 
on fish, having wings, if not so much like fins as 
those of the Penguins, at least so very small, com- 
paratively speaking, that we may refer to them, as 
illustrations of the subject before us, — we mean the 
Divers or Grebes,— one of the most beautiful of 
which, and at the same time the most common, called 
the crested, or eared, or tippet Grebe, from a feathery 
ornament like a tippet and ears, weighs two pounds 
HEAD OF THE CRESTED GREBE. 
and a half, or nearly forty times the weight of a 
Swift, and yet its spread of wing is only thirty 
inches, being six inches less than twice the spread 
