120 A TASTE OF MAINE BIRCH. 



pendicular attitude, but in the collections he is poised 

 upon his feet like a barn-yard fowl, all the wildness 

 and grace and alertness gone out of him. My spec- 

 imen 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 swal- 

 low piecemeal. Neither the loon nor the otter can 

 bolt a fish under the water ; he must come to the sur- 

 face 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 left the young bird 

 sitting upon the water. Then it too disappeared, and 

 when the old one returned and called it came out 

 from the shore. On the wing overhead, the loon 

 looks not unlike a very large duck, but when it alights 

 it ploughs into the water like a bombshell. It prob- 

 ably cannot take flight from the land, as the one Gil- 

 bert White saw and describes in his letters was picked 

 up in a field, unable to launch itself into the air. 



From Pleasant Pond we went seven miles through 



