GAVIA OF IMMER LAKE 



Lake just when they did, I cannot explain. I do not 

 understand it well enough. I never felt quite sure why 

 Peter Piper left the shore where the cardinal flowers 

 glowed, for far Brazil. All I can tell you about it is that 

 a feeling came over the loons that is called a migration 

 instinct, and, almost before they knew what was hap- 

 pening to them, they were laughing weirdly through the 

 ocean storms. 



If you see them, you will know that they are strange 

 birds whose ancestors reach back and back through the 

 ages, maybe a million years. You will think — as who 

 would not? — that a loon is a wonderful gift that Nature 

 has brought down through all the centuries ; a living relic 

 of a time of which we know very little except from fossils 

 men find and guess about. 



It is small wonder their songs sound strange to our 

 ears, for their voices have echoed through a world too 

 old for us to know. It makes us a bit timid to think 

 about all this, as it does the minister of Immer Lake, 

 who sits before his door through many a summer twi- 

 light, playing on his violin until the loons answer him 

 with their Tremble Song: — 



''0, ha-ha-ha, ho! 0, ha-ha-ha, ho!" 



