s fellow, he swam about within rifle range of our camp, letting
off volleys of his wild ironical ha-ha, he little suspected the
dangerous gun that was matched against him. As the rifle cracked both
loons made the gesture of diving, but only one of them disappeared
beneath the water; and when he came to the surface in a few moments, a
hundred or more yards away, and saw his companion did not follow, but
was floating on the water where he had last seen him, he took the alarm
and sped away in the distance. The bird I had killed was a magnificent
specimen, and I looked him over with great interest. His glossy
checkered coat, his banded neck, his snow-white breast, his powerful
lance-shaped beak, his red eyes, his black, thin, slender, marvelously
delicate feet and legs, issuing from his muscular thighs, and looking
as if they had never touched the ground, his strong wings well forward
while his legs were quite at the apex, and the neat, elegant model of
the entire bird, speed and quickness and strength stamped upon every
feature,--all delighted and lingered in the eye. The loon appears like
anything but a silly bird, unless you see him in some collection, or
in the shop of the taxidermist, where he usually looks very tame and
goose-like. Nature never meant the loon to stand up, or to use his
feet and legs for other purposes than swimming. Indeed, he cannot stand
except upon his tail in a perpendicular attitude, but in the collections
he is poised upon his feet like a barn-yard fowl, all the wildness and
grace and alertness goes out of him. My specimen sits upon a table as
upon the surface of the water, his feet trailing behind him, his body
low and trim, his head elevated and slightly turned as if in the act
of bringing that fiery eye to bear upon you, and vigilance and power
stamped upon every lineament.

The loon is to the fishes what the hawk is to the birds; he swoops down
to unknown depths upon them, and not even the wary trout can elude him.
Uncle Nathan said he had seen the loon disappear and in a moment come up
with a large trout, which he would cut in two with his strong beak, and
swallow piecemeal. Neither the loon nor the otter can bolt a fish under
the water; he must come to the surface to dispose of it. (I once saw a
man eat a cake under water in London.) Our guide told me he had seen the
parent loon swimming with a single young one upon its back. When closely
pressed it dove, or "div" as he would have it, and l