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Birds and Poets : with Other Papers by John Burroughs
page 63 of 218 (28%)
tree we should see the vapor rising and filling the branches, while
the woods of pine and hemlock would be blue with it long after it
had disappeared from the open country. It would rise from the tops
of the trees, and be carried this way and that with the wind. The
valleys of the great rivers, like the Hudson, would overflow with
it. Large bodies of water become regular magazines in which heat is
stored during the summer, and they give it out again during the
fall and early winter. The early frosts keep well back from the
Hudson, skulking behind the ridges, and hardly come over in sight
at any point. But they grow bold as the season advances, till the
river's fires, too, I are put out and Winter covers it with his
snows.



XI

One of the strong and original strokes of Nature was when she made
the loon. It is always refreshing to contemplate a creature so
positive and characteristic. He is the great diver and flyer under
water. The loon is the genius loci of the wild northern lakes, as
solitary as they are. Some birds represent the majesty of nature,
like the eagles; others its ferocity, like the hawks; others its
cunning, like the crow; others its sweetness and melody, like the
song-birds. The loon represents its wildness and solitariness. It
is cousin to the beaver. It has the feathers of a bird and the fur
of an animal, and the heart of both. It is as quick and cunning as
it is bold and resolute. It dives with such marvelous quickness
that the shot of the gunner get there just in time "to cut across a
circle of descending tail feathers and a couple of little jets of
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