800 UPLAND AND MEADOW. 



and extinguishing of the light in ray submerged lantern^ 

 Hastily lighting a little bull's-eye lamp, to determine the 

 cause (and to effect my escape, if matters grew worse), I 

 found that my submarine illuminator, the careful work 

 of weeks, had been struck a terrific blow by a coot, that 

 tore away a gauze netting and shattered the glass globe. 

 The coot was a prisoner, and I learned something of 

 his nocturnal habits, to be sure; but the fishes, that 

 night, escaped a searching investigation, to which I had 

 planned to treat them. 



October 8. — Not unlike the coot in its methods, but 

 less graceful, perhaps, and so less attractive, is that lit- 

 tle brown -gray diver that has just five local names, 

 all meaningless, and four indelicate and objectionable. 

 Three of these names indicate that, for some strange 

 reason, this bird has been coupled with popular ideas of 

 the infernal regions, and one of them associates him 

 with Inferno's principal occupant. I have often asked 

 the old fishermen why they called this diver by snch 

 foul names, but could never get a satisfactory reply. 

 There certainly is nothing, either in their manner or ap- 

 pearance, that savors of devilrj', unless it be that they 

 scare the herring away from deep pools, as I have heard 

 it asserted of them. Such a habit might prejudice the 

 fishermen. 



As the little brown diver, like the coot, comes and goes 

 with such irregularity, I have gathered nothing of in- 

 terest concerning it, beyond the fact of its cunning and 

 that it can stay under water a much longer time than ig 

 generally supposed. Whether life is sustained by any 



