124 FLORIDA BIRD-LIFE 



stringent laws prohibiting the killing of Egrets. So, too, 

 she has passed laws against pick-pockets, but just so long 

 as there are pockets worth picking there will be someone to 

 pick them, and just as long as Egrets ' plumes are worth 

 their weight in gold there will be some one to supply them, 

 until, a passing fancy gratified, the last plume has found its 

 way from the bonnet to the ash-barrel. 



"Without one promising lead to follow, I had virtually 

 abandoned the Egret hunt, when, from another state than 

 Florida, word came of an Egret rookery creditable to the 

 days of Audubon. It appears that, when a vast territory 

 was acquired as a game preserve, by a club of sportsmen, 

 it contained a few Egrets, survivors of a once flourishing 

 colony. After seven years of rigid protection, they and 

 their progeny form so conspicuous an element of local bird- 

 life that, on the evening of May 7, 1907, as I reached the 

 region in which they lived, I saw them in dozens flying 

 toward the still distant rookery. 



The return, at nightfall, of birds to their nests, or to a 

 fixed roosting-place, is possessed for us of that interest 

 which is attached to all the intelligible actions of animals. 

 The knowledge that the creature has a definite plan or pur- 

 pose seems to emphasize our kinship with it. So we mark 

 the homeward flight of Heron or of Crow and, knowing 

 whither they are bound, travel with them in fancy to the 

 journey's end. This has been a fatal habit for the Herons. 

 It mattered little how secluded was the rookery ; the hunter 

 found it simply by following their line of flight. 



My way to the home of the white-plumed birds was less 

 direct than their air-line. For hours , a little home-made 

 tug, with a swelling wave at her bow, took me through a 

 succession of bays, canals, cut-offs and serpentine creeks, 

 frightening the Gallinules and Blackbirds in the reeds, and 

 surprising an occasional alligator on his favorite mud bank. 



A night's rest, and in the morning the journey was 

 resumed through park-like pine forests and under the moss- 



