8 THE AUDUBON BULLETIN 
material for visual education along these lines is available in the form 
of motion picture film and could be introduced into the schools of the 
country at relatively low cost. 
American Egrets in the Lake Region 
By W. J. BEECHER 
It seems quite impossible for me to recall any field experiences of the 
past summer without recalling also the prolonged drouth that so pro- 
foundly influenced them. Even now in fancy I can see the nacreous rising 
of clouds on every horizon, falsely promising a rain that never came. Again 
I see the dazzling white of highways turning upward, ever upward to 
sharp contrast with the hazy blue; and the hot blast from the prairies 
carries on its wings the taste of dust! Rain? it could not rain! 
The season is at its height: every day the extraordinary heat seems 
to increase, the sunlight to grow more brilliant; from Chicago comes a 
steady stream of resorters and cottagers, seeking the relief that only the 
lakes can afford. And sometimes even the lakes seem a part of the abnormal 
fantasy; for scanning the slough a half-mile out, one often imagines he 
can distinguish the immaculate figures of long-legged, long-necked tropic 
Discs 
. . . Just off the southwest corner of Long Lake there is a dip in the 
long swell of the morainic upland,—one of those frequent small areas 
where the flora of the gravelly hillsides gives way to the lush, green vege- 
tation of the slough,—a depression which in normal years is the reservoir 
for quite a water supply. Formerly, before the coming of the railroad, a 
narrow channel wended through the marsh, connecting it with the lake; 
perhaps it was the cutting off of this feeder by the embankment that caused 
the pond to dwindle to almost nothing last summer. Looking from the 
railroad elevation on the north, one sees a lagoon singularly lacking in the 
cover necessary for marsh birds. he eye encounters almost no cat-tails or 
tules; there is only a narrow margin of saw grass about its border. East- 
ward, just at the foot of the slope is a wall of osiers that formerly marked 
the highest reach of the water; on the western margin, where the green 
swell of the goat pasture rolls away from the boggy shore, a quaint white 
summer cottage snuggles, its back to the woods. Deep-rooted in the muddy 
brink lie the rotting hulks of two sun-bleached duck boats; the water has 
long since shrunken from these, leaving a blackened field of lily pads, 
fantastically curled and seared as by a glowing iron. 
Just over the eastern rise appears the roof of a pretentious residence, 
and across the tracks within easy stone’s throw a large roadhouse squats; 
and somehow one gets the impression that this ancient little tarn is the 
only place hereabouts that remains untainted by the encroachment of 
