660 Report of State Geologist. 



Mr. E. J. Chansler has informed me of their breeding at Swan and 

 Grassy Ponds, Daviess County. The summer of 1897 he visited these 

 ponds and learned that Egrets liad been very scarce that year. On Swan 

 Pond, where formerly a thousand could be seen in one flock, none were 

 found. Daviess County adjoins Knox and Gibson, where Mr. Eidg- 

 way has reported them nesting. Mrs. Jane L. Hine and Mr. H. W. 

 McBride have reported them nesting in Dekalb County. Mr. Mc- 

 Bride says at the heronry at Golden Lake, Steuben County, for several 

 years, he often saw a pair of these birds among the many Great Blue 

 Herons, and while satisfied they nested, he could not determine which 

 nest was theirs. A hunter well known to Mr. McBride informed him 

 of shooting a "White Crane," which he described, from its nest at 

 Wolf Lake, Noble County. This must have been the present species. 



Mr. R.B.Trouslot,on the occasion of his visit to "Cranetown," Jasper 

 County, in April, 1887, among the thousands of Great Blue Herons 

 breeding, found a few American Egrets, but did not identify their 

 nests. As is noted under the last species, ]\Ir. C. E. Aiken found them 

 breeding quite numerously with that species at "Crane Heaven,'' 

 on the Kankakee River some twenty miles above Water Valley. 

 Mr. F. M. Woodruff and Mr. J. G. Parker, Jr., both of Chi- 

 cago, have kindly furnished me with separate accounts of the breed- 

 ing of the American Egret in Porter County at different dates, but 

 whether the locality referred to is the same, I do not know. Mr. 

 Woodruff says Mr. Chas. Eldridge found this bird breeding at Kouts, 

 Ind., in May, 1885, and took a large number of their eggs. He found 

 their nests in the same trees with those of the Great Blue Heron. He 

 adds: "I visited the heronries last June (1896), and did not see a 

 single specimen of the White Egret. In the fall of 1895 a terrible fire 

 swept through the timber along the Kankakee River, which probably 

 accounts for the depopulated state of the heronries." 



Mr. Parker informs me that Mr. George Wilcox found quite a num- 

 ber breeding in a heronry with the last species near Kouts, Ind., dur- 

 ing May, 1895. Mr. Parker himself visited the place in the spring of 

 1896, and found only a few A. herodias occupying the heronry. He 

 thinks the small number of those found was due to the fact that a 

 heavy fire swept through the timber in the fall of 1895. The same 

 gentleman observed a flock of about twenty-five at Liverpool August 

 27, 1887. By this time most of them have gone through. There are 

 a few references to its rare occurrence later. Prof. Evermann has 

 noted it in Carroll County in early September. Mr. Deane has seen it 

 at English Lake in September, and Dr. Langdon notes it, upon the 

 authority of Mr. Porter, near Sandusk3'^,0.,in that month. In Florida, 



