| Show Doors in the West of Natural in the Rocky Mountain Plateau H of Study in the University of Utah ill I. Homes and Habits of the Great Blue Small Butterflies The and Wood ON THE herons in their Ming places we may visit in the Great Salt I have spoken elsewhere peculiar scenery over the pe of this body of water as to the observant eye an panorama of some finest of rare scientific scenic and associations that to the student of are all presented scale and with a that is as exquisite and ive as it is natural and the pleasures of sight on outing the beauty of of rock and moun-floating clouds and chang-set of wave-crest in all their love-f color transformations and poets have left be said by the average al who can enjoy- such without any attempt at There is a chastened I every visible object under the strong sun-midsummer in the of this n scarcely refrain from of the waves when the K breeze decked every th ts lace of white ws paler blue and of infinite depth in its e a faint haze the distant shore curled in feathery in ln thin strata half I Why so with all his scarcely warmed the JJ eze that swept beneath In arid re tHe Shade is to be K cooler than in the and the evaporation from the water surface reduces the temperature many degrees in this breezy While on land the day was hot and the air barely in we could gaze for without at the nearest which looked so much like brown in the warm and glowing and as they became more first into purple and then into a The But if the dawn and early morning had been thus irreproachable in their photo- W- The Great Blus Heron standi ig on a distant rock with Gulls on each Young Blue Heron on stick-built Photographs by Fred J. University of graphic majesty of the what shall we say of the For a blazing fire lighted the first with a yellow golden glow of indescribable which later passed the various hues of and embracing a long arc of the horizon and reaching far into the The which had moved swells all in white-capped still in the late was glassy It looked like a vast sheet of burnished gold to the south of the setting and was alternately either a mirror or a dark abyss to the east and The Great Blue The great blue as they stood singly on the top of some projecting made some of the most striking pictures I have ever motionless as they added an element of beauty to that strange and barren landscape of rocKy island in that blue The slender the stately the elegant motion when they flew what a delight to the what a symbol of the wild in It seemed that no one could tire of watching these and almost every member of our party of persons gazed at them as long as they were And to think how frequently a rifle ball turns this splendid bird of history and decorative art into a mass of rot ting thereby robbing the people of the presence of a creature that provides us all with so much innocent and pure The only thing urged herons is that they eat but what they Can we not afford a little useless fish to have with us wondrous a So queer and comical is the blue heron that children look and laugh constantly as they observe Let us have a law to prevent the exter- of the few herons still add a wondrous interest to our bleak deserts and briny They fish and nest about the Jordan and in the sloughs of the Bear and they are fond of marsh where is But in the fall they fly though some of them quite a few remain with us through the Their Form and These odd which carry almost no being mostly of and placed by Moses with the of this because their steady diet of fish and frogs gives to their flesh a fishy odor and an unpleasant they are eaten by very poor people in some parts of the southern though each carcass could yield only a pound or two of The birds look large but and legs constitute two-thirds of their which is about four each wing being about a foot ana a half and the bill from four and one-half to over six inches Possibly their life among the reeds and rushes and countless ages of wading in streams and ponds have caused their legs to grow longer and their necks to till now certain writers regard them as good illustrations of what can be done in the way of development one however this may be as to past and prehistoric the blue heron of Bible history was much the same bird as cuir own queer beauty all neck and legs it may to prior ages of wading and stretching necks to find food among the roots of the water Jn color the blue heron is bluish gray but the top of the head from which springs a crest of long black The shoulders are striped with the under parts streaked with black and the thighs and the edges of the cinnamon In the breeding the crest has also one or two white The young are lacking the white and rufous |
