Loon
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Loon. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
a family of divers not remote from the grebe. Our species, three in number, are all northern birds. The common loon, or great northern diver, is a magnificent bird twenty-eight to thirty-two inches in length. It has a wing stretch of forty-four to fifty inches. The upperparts are black, bluish, or greenish. The underparts are pure white. The back and wings are spotted and barred with white. The head and neck are jet black. The latter is encircled by a white collar. The black bill is long, straight, and pointed. If we except the wood duck, the loon is the most showy of our inland water birds. It breeds from Illinois to the Arctic circle , and winters as far south as the Gulf of Mexico. It lives chiefly on fish, which it pursues by diving. It rises from the water with difficulty, yet, once on the wing, is a bird of strong flight. It is a fine swimmer and diver, but it is hardly able to walk on land. When resting on shore it lies outstretched, or else sits on its tail like a penguin. The legs are thin and sharp, made to cut water like a knife, and set well back for swimming. The loon deposits two or three grayish-olive eggs in a slight depression in the ground. The nest is located a few feet from the water's edge, so that the parent bird may launch itself into the water like a ship gliding from the stocks. The young are black and fluffy. They delight to ride on the mother's back. They are soused unceremoniously when she goes down after a fish. The weird laughter of the loon is one of the delights of the northern camper. Thoreau speaks of the loud laughing as a "wild sound heard far and suited to the wildest lake." Sometimes the cry of the bird is as wild as that of a maniac. Canoemen have the phrase "crazy as a loon." See Grebe ; Auk ; Coot
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a town in the Philippine Islands situated on the island of Bohol on the western coast. It is three miles S. of Sandigan Island and the largest town in that section of the archipelago. Near by is a good anchoring spot. Pop. about 20,000.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Aiton's 1910 placing of the loon as "not remote from the grebe" no longer holds: the resemblance is now read as convergence between divers and grebes, and loons stand alone in the order Gaviiformes while grebes are grouped with flamingos. The breeding range has also retreated from the one Aiton gave: common loons no longer nest "from Illinois" northward, with the southern edge now roughly the northern tier of states, and lead fishing tackle, mercury and shoreline development are the standard conservation worries. The bird has meanwhile become an emblem — Minnesota's state bird since 1961, and the reason Canada's dollar coin is called the loonie. Collier's other Loon, the town on Bohol, lost its 1855 stone church when the magnitude 7.2 Bohol earthquake struck on 15 October 2013; the coast was lifted and the church has since been painstakingly rebuilt.
Written for this edition, 2026.