THINGS TO HEAR THIS FALL 89 



dids, and crickets. You have heard them all your 

 life ; but the trouble is that, because you have heard 

 them so constantly in the autumn, and because one 

 player after another has come gradually into the or- 

 chestra, you have taken them as part of the natural 

 course of things and have never really heard them in- 

 dividually, to know what parts they play. Now any- 

 body can hear a lion roar, or a mule bray, or a loon 

 laugh his wild crazy laugh over a silent mountain 

 lake, and know what sound it is ; but who can hear a 

 cricket out of doors, or a grasshopper, and know 

 which is which ? 



Ill 



Did you ever hear a loon laugh ? You ought to. 

 I would go a hundred miles to hear that weird, 

 meaningless, melancholy, maniacal laughter of the 

 loon, or great northern diver, as the dusk comes down 

 over some lonely 

 lake in the wil- 

 derness of the 

 far North. From 

 Maine westward 

 to northern Illi- 

 nois you may listen for him in 

 early autumn ; then, when the mi- 

 gration begins, anywhere south to the Gulf of 

 Mexico. You may never hear the call of the bull 

 moose in the northern woods, nor the howl of a coy- 

 ote on the western praires, nor the wild cac, cac, cac 



