thus for the sake of amusement. If these be not structures which the pair have from some cause or another deserted, may they not be deceptive nests, that is, nests calculated to lead to the supposition that the birds have accomplished their task and retired, and therefore that further search is useless?

We have here cited examples of peculiarly artful concealment; but let it be observed that, as a general rule, concealment is the protective plan adopted by the feathered race-by the bird which builds in the hedgerow or on the bank, among the sedges of the morass or heather of the moorland, in the deep hole of a time-worn tree or in a burrow on the face of a sandcliff, or the steep bank of the river, amidst the shingles of the beach, or in the centre of the clover field. Still, there are exceptions. The familiar sparrow in our towns and cities seems to think more of convenience than concealment. To him alike is the gutter under the edge of the roof, a crevice in the wall, the ivy or creeper which overspreads it, the recesses of carved masonry-work, and the tree in the garden. Yet he never affects a very elevated position.

Such are but a few gleanings from this interesting subject, which illustrates so remarkably the tender loving-kindness with which the benignant Creator has provided for the welfare of this department of his works.

DABCHICKS.

PROPERLY, I ought not to call them dabchicks-not at least in capitals, and at the head of my paper-for the true distinctive English name of the bird is "The Little Grebe." But "dabchick" is so happily expressive of the habits and appearance of the animal, that it recalls in a moment its nervous jerky motion on the water, and its sudden disappearance with a "flip," as if instead of diving

it had unexpectedly jumped down its own throat. Oh! those long spring summer days, when I lay in my punt among the rushes of the Mere, and watched the manifold incessant business of its watery world. The Mere, so called, of my youth, was a pond of about ten acres, swarming with life above and below its surface. It lay about two hundred yards from our house, and, with gently-sloping green banks, was skirted on the further side by an irregular belt of trees, among some of whose trunks the water rose when the Mere was full. My brother and I had built (with considerable assistance, it must be confessed, from the village carpenter) a punt, after the recipe given in Colonel Hawker's book on shooting. We built it in the coach-house, and when it had been carried down to the brink in, or rather on, a tumbril, we watched its launch, and gloried in its capabilities with an interest worthy of the 'Warrior.' A great portion of my subsequent holiday life I spent in that punt, and baled out of it, in turn, I was going to say, half the water in the pond. Like most things which are in the main a success, it had its weak points, and one was an occasional trick of leaking. Moreover, it was a bad sailer; being quite flatbottomed, however close hauled and with the helm jammed hard down, it invariably moved before the wind, like a leaf. We boys concealed this unredeemed lateral motion from ourselves for a while, by saying that she "paid off" rather. But it would not do; after trying scores of times to sail across the Mere with a half wind, and always drifting sideways to the lee shore, we laid up the mast in ordinary, and stuck to ordinary punt propulsion. The place simmered with life. It was famous, among other products, for leeches. People used to stand in the shallows, with bare legs and expectant faces, like human floats waiting for a bite, being themselves their own rod, line, and bait. Every now and then the watcher would slip his hand down his calf and transfer a leech to his bottle. When he had enough, he sold them to the apothecarics

I

in a neighbouring town, at so much a dozen. Beside the leeches there were many pungent but less valuable animals in the weeds, which at some seasons of the year would drive an incautious bather wild for a week. There were also many shell-fish, beside an abundant stock of pike, perch, carp, and tench. When the summer sun grew hot, and quickened the rank growth of weeds, animal life was multiplied in proportion. The swallows slapped the surface with their wings, as they snapped up their constant daylong-meal; the dragon-fly sat in motionless brilliancy on the rush, while the cows and horses greedily cropped the succulent water herbage, leg-deep, whisking their tails round and round, like ships with their screws out of water. There were many birds in this busy aquarium, especially coots and waterhens, but my especial friends were the "dabchicks."

Wriggling about everywhere, all over the pond, in a state of chronic fuss, as if they had only five minutes left to get through the work of the day, now popping up à propos to nothing at all, and then turning head over heels, as if to catch their tails between their legs, these birds fidgeted through life in a ceaseless bustle. Was it sheer idleness which made me love to watch them by the hour together, lying in my punt, while the rushes grated pleasantly against its sides as I moved? There is a reception of nature's truth in these seasons of seeming laziness, which, though one is not conscious of the strain of observation, stores the mind with healthy useful memories.

The family of grebes to which the dabchick belongs, represent the freshwater divers. They remain during nearly the whole of the year in the same mere, spending a large proportion of their time under water, whence they drag the material which their nests are composed of. The grebe seldom takes to the wing, and makes a very bad hand of walking, its legs being placed so far astern as to render it difficult for the body to be supported when on dry

land. It has not the sense to hold its chin up and jump along like a kangaroo.

The dabchick swims at a great pace under water, and when disturbed will remain for some time with its head alone above the surface-sometimes sticking up only bill enough to breathe with. The bird, which is reddish black, with ash colour below the water line, weighs about six ounces, i. e. to provide a more intelligible idea, say about as much as a rook. The young ones dive from the cradle; indeed, unlike the mother of many little folks, its anxious parent takes care to keep its feet wet during the whole course of its youth. Master Dabchick is never obliged to put on dry stockings when he comes home, for the nest is always dripping wet through. The eggs, about five in number, are laid in a squashy heap of weeds; the mother, defying the danger of a damp bed, incubates in a puddle, and when she leaves the eggs even for a short time, drags a few soaking weeds over them, so that they are not dried even by the mid-day sun. The effect of this upon the eggs is remarkable; when laid they are quite white, but before they are hatched become of a dull, blotchy, reddish brownexactly as if they had been smeared all over by bloody fingers and then put back. This is caused by the juices of the decaying materials of the nest. The eggs of coots and waterhens, on the contrary, are hatched dry, never change their colour, and are always left exposed when the parent quits its nest. But the dabchick's egg might set would-be zoologists together by the ears, as much as the chameleon did the opinionated travellers. "Tis white! 'tis mottled! no, 'tis red. The dabchick flies but seldom, but when he does he pegs away at it furiously, working his stumpy hardworking wings with all his might. The rapidity with which he dives enabled him to duck at the flash of the old flint guns; before the priming had fired the charge he was off, and the sportsman saw a bubble instead of a bird on the water, It is wanton work,

however, to kill these cheerful little creatures. No skill can be developed in the practice, i. e. when the percussion gun is used; and when obtained they are worthless, the flavour of the dabchick being, I should think, easily realized by putting some rank, fishy weeds into a wholesome dish of some other small fowl. No, leave the merry fellows alone; but if you care to watch the capricious frolics of a water-bird, you cannot choose a better than the common but most interesting dabchick.

I cannot help making an apology to the great crested grebe for thus dwelling on the manners and customs of his small relation, the dabchick.

The great crested grebe, or loon, is a giant compared to our little friend the dabchick, and altogether makes a more respectable appearance, both in picture and pond. The habits and figure of the two birds, though, are much the same. There are numbers of loons in the "broads" of Norfolk. Indeed, it is in East Anglia that I have most especially watched the dabchick. These loons, like the lesser grebes, incubate and leave their eggs in the wet, and meet with the same ridiculous failure when they attempt to walk. Like them, they are capital divers, and begin from the egg. A most accurate and patient observer and friend of birds, the Rev. J. C. Atkinson, states that "the first lessons of the young loon in diving are taken beneath the literal shelter of their mother's wing." In this case, supposing the instinctive expectancy of the newly hatched led them to wait for the signal from the parent hatcher, and defer their infant plunge till the old bird dived with them, these young loons would prove an exacting family to a domestic hen. Possibly she might fancy them less disappointing than ducks; while she, like many anxious and gratified mothers, attributed their abstinence to nature rather than to artificial deference, or absence of contagious example.

The plumage of the grebes is silky, close, thick, and glossy; the