ADAPTATION OF FOODS TO SOIL, ETC. 63 
These were the principal flights whence our ducks 
came. 
About 1878, a narrow-gauge railroad was laid from 
Le Roy to West Lebanon, Indiana, directly across the 
above flyway. Canals were soon cut, the land ditched 
and drained into the Sangamon River, and in a few 
years the great flyway and stopping place of millions 
of non-divers was greatly disturbed. A few years later 
the great Vermilion Swamps, lying south of Milks 
Grove and north of Burr Oak, in Ford County, were 
ditched and drained into the Vermilion River. This 
still greater disturbance practically destroyed the en- 
tire flight. 
About 1880, the building of the town of Pullman 
was commenced, and the shooting upon Calumet Lake 
and the marshes and sloughs from Irondale to George, 
Wolf, Hyde lakes, etc., was reduced to nothing. 
About 1888, the large lakes upon the Mississippi, 
near Fountain Bluffs, Big, Swan, Mud, with Upper 
and Lower Little lakes, were drained and hundreds 
of miles of water, sloughs and glades were rendered 
almost duckless, where a few years before they 
swarmed in hundreds of thousands. 
Again, the progressive ambition of shooters to own 
club houses, cottages, etc., on good shooting and fish- 
ing grounds, led them up the Fox Lake Region. The 
opening of the Wisconsin Central was the entrance of 
the wedge and after Lake Villa was built, followed by 
summer cottages on Fox, Marie, Bluff, and Channel 
lakes, the death knell of Grass Lake, one of the finest 
feeding, roosting and play grounds in the whole re- 
gion, was sounded. Thus the glory of the shooting 
