( 43°) 
GREAT NORTHERN DIVER OR LOON. 
~ CoLYMBUS GLACIALIS, LINN. 
PLATE CCCVI. Aputr Mate anp Youne MAte. 
Tue Loon, as this interesting species of Diver is generally called 
in the United States, is a strong, active, and vigilant bird. When it 
has acquired its perfect plumage, which is not altered in colour at any 
successive moult, it is really a beautiful creature; and the student of 
Nature who has opportunities of observing its habits, cannot fail to de- 
rive much pleasure from watching it as it pursues its avocations. View 
it as it buoyantly swims over the heaving billows of the Atlantic, or 
as it glides along deeply immersed, when apprehensive of danger, on 
the placid lake, on the grassy islet of which its nest is placed; calcu- 
late, if you can, the speed of its flight, as it shoots across the sky ; 
mark the many plunges it performs in quest of its finny food, or in 
eluding its enemies ; list to the loud and plaintive notes which it issues, 
either to announce its safety to its mate, or to invite some traveller of 
its race to alight, and find repose and food; follow the anxious and 
careful mother-bird, as she leads about her precious charge ; and you 
will not count your labour lost, for you will have watched the ways of 
one of the wondrous creations of unlimited Power and unerring Wis- 
dom. You will find pleasure too in admiring the glossy tints of its 
head and neck, and the singular regularity of the unnumbered spots 
by which its dusky back and wings are checkered. 
I have met with the Great Diver, in winter, on all the water- 
courses of the United States, whence, however, it departs when the 
cold becomes extreme, and the surface is converted into an impene- 
trable sheet of ice. I have seen it also along the whole of our Atlan- 
tic coast, from Maine to the extremity of Florida, and from thence to 
the mouths of the Mississippi, and the shores of Texas, about Galves- 
ton Island, where some individuals in the plumage characteristic of the 
second moult, were observed in the course of my late expedition, in 
the month of April 1837. Indeed, as is the case with most other species 
of migrating birds, the young remove farther south that the old indi- 
