106 WHERE ROLLS THE OREGON 



egret is ever again seen flying over the inland 

 waters of the Pacific coast, it will be due to Wil- 

 liam L. Finley, to his discovery of the slaughter 

 on his trip into the Malheur in 1 908, and to his 

 efforts which made Malheur a wild-bird reserva- 

 tion. 



But was it, we wonder, one bird or two that 

 he saw winging over the lake in 1908? If two 

 birds, were they male and female ? and were they 

 the last two ? and is this small colony which we 

 discovered four years later in Silver Lake, the 

 seed of that last solitary pair? Could it have been 

 that the race was so nearly cut off in all this part 

 of the world? and does it mean that slowly now, 

 with the new protection of these better times, the 

 egret will come back to the willows along the 

 Silvies and at Clear Lake, and to the islands in 

 the canebrake of the Malheur? 



I think so. In the willows of Silver Lake, I 

 counted twenty-eight birds. These are enough if 

 they are given a chance. The life of the species, 

 however, does not hang upon this perilously 

 slender thread. Along the Gulf and Southern 

 Atlantic States, and in the Middle West, small 

 colonies are reported as surviving, mere handfuls, 



