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NATURE-STUDY REVIEW [10:6— Sept., 1914 



and we realize, to some extent, what wonderful places for the field 

 biologist they must have been. In a short time and in a restricted 

 area, Mr. Ridgway recorded ninety-five species of birds, including 

 a niimber now absent or very scarce on Illinois prairies but then 

 apparently common. Some of these are: black tern, kites of 

 three species, ravens, yellow-headed blackbirds, and marsh wrens. 

 It is lamentable that so few naturalists wrote as Mr. Ridgway 

 did, of the life of these undisturbed prairies, and little information 



Fig. 2. A Prairie Pond in Winter 



has been preserved in zoological literature concerning this import- 

 ant stage in the history of our prairie life, when marsh and swamp 

 animals thrived in such large numbers there. We still have an 

 opportunity to find out something of the smaller animals, at least, 

 that used to live in these prairie ponds and marshes, for man's 

 extensive drainage systems have not been successful to the last 

 degree; and here and there, over some parts of the Illinois prairie, 

 in low places, there are small ponds or marshes that are remnants 

 of the old prairie sloughs with thick, rank vegetation, resembling, in 

 all probability, that which used to prevail in these places before 

 they were reclaimed. Such a variety of organisms live in these 



