and cunningly must she have slipped away, for, on finding her absent, although I had not heard any noise, I happened to look toward the water, and there she was, gliding off in the quiet manner usual on such occasions. The young of the Loon are covered at birth with a kind of black stiff down, and in a day or two after are led to the water by their mother. They swim and dive extremely well even at this early stage of their existence, and after being fed by regurgitation for about a fortnight, receive portions of fish, aquatic insects, and small reptiles, until they are able to maintain themselves. During this period, grey feathers appear among the down of the back and belly, and the black quill-feathers of the wings and tail gradually elongate. They are generally very fat, and so clumsy as to be easily caught on land, if their retreat to the water be cut off. But should you miss your opportunity, and the birds succeed in gaining the liquid element, into which they drop like so many Terrapins, you will be astonished to see them as it were run over the water with extreme celerity, leaving behind them a distinct furrow. This power of traversing the surface of the water is possessed not only by the young and old of this species, but by all other kinds of swimmers, including even Gallinules and Coots. When the young are well able to fly, the mother entices them to remove from the pond or lake on which they have been bred, and leads them on wing to the nearest part of the sea, after which she leaves them to shift for themselves. Now and then, after this period, the end of August or beginning of September, I have still seen the young of a brood, two or three in number, continuing together until they were induced to travel southward, when they generally set out singly. Having given you a figure of a young bird, taken in October 1819 from a specimen obtained on the Ohio, I will not here trouble you with its description, but merely state that the young undergo their first moult in December, when they are seen singularly patched with portions of new plumage beautifully speckled with white, on a bed of almost uniform ash-brown. I was told, while in the State of Maine, that if the young were caught soon after being hatched, and before they had been in the water, they would, if thrown into it, immediately follow a paddled canoe anywhere; but, as I have not myself made the experiment, I cannot speak of this as a fact.