Animal Life in Prairie Ponds 



T. H. Hankinson 



A nature student, living in a prairie region like that over so 

 much of Illinois and in a neighborhood where land is owned by 

 progressive agriculturists who practise "clean farming," may have 

 little else in the way of animal life to study than that found in such 

 artificial habitats as corn fields, hedge rows, orchards, and farm 



^ 



Fig. 1. A Praii 



Pond, showing some of the surrounding 

 cultivated region 



yards. He may regret from the naturalist's standpoint, the suc- 

 cess of drainage ditches and tile-drains and wish he could be put 

 back to the time when the extensive marshes and sloughs covered 

 much of the now rich, black com land. When we read Robert 

 Ridgway's observations* made in 187 1 on the bird life of one of 

 these pieces of wild prairie, located in Richland County, Illinois, 

 we can make inferences concerning the abundance of forms of 

 animal life, other than birds, that used to exist on these old ])rairics, 



♦American Naturalist, volume 7, 1873, pa^es 197-203 



235 



