LOOM. See Weaving.

LOOM, or Loon (Icelandic, Lomr), a name applied to water-birds of three distinct Families, all remarkable for their clumsy gait on land. The first of them is the Colymbidae, to which the term Diver (7.v.) is nowadays usually restricted in books; the second the Podicipedidae, or Grebes (see vol. xi. p. 30); and the third the Alcidae. The form Loo??, is most commonly used both in the British Islands and in North America for all the species of the genus Colymbus, or Eudytes according to some ornithologists, frequently with the prefix Sprat, indicating the kind of fish on which they are. supposed to prey; though it is the local name of the Great Crested Grebe {Podiceps cristatus) wherever that bird is sufficiently well known to have one; and, as appears from Grew {Mus. Reg. Noc.,p. 69), it was formerly given to the Little Grebe or Dabchick (P. fluviatilis or minor) as well. The other form Loo?/? seems more confined in its application to the north, and is said by Mr T. Edmonston {Etym. Gloss. Shetl. and Orlen Dialect, p. 67) to be the proper name· in Shetland of Colymbus septentrionalis ∙, but it has come into common use among Arctic seamen as the name of the species of Guillemot {Alca arra or brueηnichi) which in thousands throngs the cliffs of far northern lands, from whose (hence called) “loomeries” they obtain a considerable stock of wholesome food, while the writer believes he has heard the word locally applied to the Razorbill {g∕v.). (a. n.)