finley] natural nesting sites 281 



In the clay counties quite a different condition of affairs obtains. 

 The soil is hardly half as valuable. Much of it is too compact to be 

 successfully drained by tile, and open ditches result. These ditches 

 are skirted on each side by patches of "blue stemmed" prairie 

 grass. The fence rows are as a rule very wide and are filled with 

 the same grass. One public highway, little used, was completely 

 covered with this same plant. From one point, eighty-five hay- 

 stacks were counted which shows that much space is given to a 

 cultivation of that crop. These facts show that in these counties 

 the chickens have ample opportunity to find places where nests 

 may pass the incubating season unmolested. In one fence row a 

 quarter of a mile in length, three old nests with egg shells were 

 found. 



Of the two counties in which most work was done, Coles is in the 

 black prairie and Effingham in the clay. There are approximately 

 249,600 acres of prairie land in Coles and 209,066 acres in Effing- 

 ham. According to the averages given above this gives the former 

 county 10,400 prairie chickens and the latter 59,733. Allowing 

 Effingham as much prairie land as Coles, the average would have 

 given her 71,680 prairie chickens, over seven times as many as the 

 latter County. 



A District Deputy Game Warden who accompanied me on most 

 of this work assured me that much illegal hunting of prairie chickens 

 had occurred in the southern counties. Having lived in Coles 

 County, I know that most fanners of that region are religious in the 

 protection of these birds there. So it is not at all a question of 

 shooting the birds. It seems that all the evidence tends to show 

 that it is a question of abundance of natural breeding places. It 

 is true that the destruction of breeding places is very intimately 

 connected with the abundance of animal fonns inhabiting tillable 

 soil and it is also true that it is a more potent factor in the abun- 

 dance of other forms than is usually accorded it. 



