IN THE HAUNTS OF THE LOON 



ing at its height almost to a scream. There 

 is nothing like it in the mysteries of outdoor 

 sounds, and when heard in the gathering twi- 

 light it is the ghostliest of all echoes. The 

 faces of drowned men rise, they say, when 

 the loon's mocking merriment sweeps over the 

 lake, and the solemn notes of bull-frogs sink 

 in silence as the cry floats past. As the sickle 

 of the new moon is etched beyond the hills, 

 and shadows hover over emerald-burnished 

 rushes, and the sands are dusky in the still- 

 ness, there comes the raucous complaint of 

 the great diver. And, if you are a believer 

 in the ghostly and the supernatural, you will 

 say it is the cry of a lost spirit, the wail of a 

 soul from the confines of " night's Plutonian 

 shore." 



The loon is hunted as a " specimen," to be 

 mounted and set in store-windows or mu- 

 seums, and hunters sometimes shoot loons to 

 adorn a " den " with. But this is only done 

 by the unthinking. For the proper place for 

 all birds that are not strictly edible game- 

 birds, is their native haunts. It would be 

 very difficult to shoot a loon with a shot-gun, 

 as he almost invariably keeps out of shot-gun 



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