Walking exercise should be resorted to as soon as the horse is able to bear it, and this by degrees may be increased to a gentle trot.—The Horse.
Greasy, a. Oily, fat, unctuous; smeared with grease.
Greaves, s. The offal of chandlers; the animal matter which remains after the tallow has been extracted. Greaves mixed with oatmeal make excellent feeding for dogs.
Grebe, s. A water-fowl.
The bills of this genus are compressed on the sides, and though not large, are firm and strong, straight and sharp pointed: nostrils linear; a bare space between the bill and the eyes; tongue slightly cloven at the end; body depressed; feathers thickly set, compact, very smooth, and glossy; wings short, scapulars long; no tail; legs placed far behind, much compressed, or flattened on the sides, and serrated behind with a double row of notches; toes furnished on each side with membranes; the inner toes broader than the outer; the nails broad and flat.
This genus is ranked by Ray and Linnæus with the diver and guillemot; but as the grebes differ materially from those birds, Brisson, Pennant, and Latham, have separated them. The grebes are almost continually upon the water, where they are remarkable for their agility: at sea they seem to sport with the waves, through which they seem to dart with the greatest ease, and, in swimming, slide along, as it were without any apparent effort upon the surface, with wonderful velocity; they also dive to a great depth in pursuit of their prey. They frequent fresh-water lakes and inlets of rivers as well as the ocean, to which they are obliged to resort in severe seasons, when the former are bound up by the ice. No cold or damp can penetrate their thick, close plumage, which looks as it were glazed on the surface, and by which they are enabled, while they have open water, to brave the rigours of the coldest winter. They can take wing from the water, or drop from an eminence, and fly with great swiftness to a considerable distance; but when they happen to alight on the land, are helpless, for they cannot either rise from the flat surface of the ground, or make much progress in walking upon it. On shore they sit with the body erect, commonly upon the whole length of their legs, and, in attempting to regain the water, they awkwardly waddle forward in the same position; and, if by any interruption they happen to fall on their belly, they sprawl with their feet, and flap their short wings as if they were wounded, and may easily be taken by the hand, for they can make no other defence than by striking violently with their sharp-pointed beak. They live upon fish, and it is said, also upon fresh water and sea-weeds. They are generally very fat and heavy in proportion to their size.
The females generally build their nests in the holes of the rocky precipices which overhang the sea-shores; and those which breed on lakes, make theirs of withered reeds and rushes, &c., and fix it among the growing stalks of a tuft, or bush, of such like herbage, close by the water’s edge. They lay from two to four eggs at one hatching.
The skins of these birds are dressed with the feathers on, and made into warm beautiful tippets and muffs; the under part only is used for this purpose, and a skin of one of the species sells as high as fourteen shillings.
Great Crested Grebe.—(Greater crested Douker, Car Goose, Ash-coloured Loon, or Gaunt, Colymbus cristatus, Linn.; Le Grêbe huppé, Buff.)—This bird is the largest of the grebes, weighing about two pounds and a half, and measuring twenty-one inches in length, and thirty in breadth. The bill is about two inches and a quarter long, dark at the tip, and red at the base; the bare stripe, or core, between the bill and eyes, is in the breeding season red, afterwards change to dusky; irides fine pale crimson. The head, in adult males, is furnished with a great quantity of feathers, which form a kind of ruff, surrounding the upper part of the neck; those on each side of the head, behind, are longer than the rest, and stand out like ears: this ruff is of a bright ferruginous colour, edged on the under side with black. The upper parts of the plumage are of a sooty or mouse-coloured brown; the under parts of a glossy or silvery white; the inner ridge of the wing is white; the secondaries of the same colour, forming an oblique bar across the wing when closed: the outsides of the legs are dusky, the inside and toes of a pale green.