"At least four of my longer excursions into the surrounding country... were made with a view to possible ivory-billed woodpeckers. First, because it was nearer, I went to the swamp, taking an early breakfast and setting forth in a fog that was almost a mist, to make as much of the distance as possible before the sun came out. My course lay westward, some four miles, along the railway track, which, thanks to somebody, is provided with a comfortable footpath of hard clay covering the sleepers midway between the rails. If all railroads were thus furnished they might be recommended as among the best of routes for walking naturalists, since they go straight through the wild country. This one carried me by turns through woodland and cultivated field, upland and swamp, pine land and hammock; and, happily, my expectations of the ivory-bill were not lively enough to quicken my steps or render me heedless of things along the way.

"Here I was equally surprised and delighted by the sight of yellow jessamine still in flower more than a month after I had seen the end of its brief season, only a hundred miles further south. Further along, a great blue heron was stalking about the edge of a marshy pool, and further still, in a woody swamp, stood three little blue herons, one of them in white plumage. I should have been gladder for a sight of the big woodpecker, whose reputed dwelling-place lay not far ahead. But, though I waited and listened, and went through the swamp, and beyond it, I heard no strange shout, nor saw any strange bird...

"This was the place for the ivory-bill, and as at the swamp two days before, so now I stopped and listened, and then stopped and listened again. The Fates were still against me. There was neither woodpecker nor turkey, and I pushed on, mostly through pine woods—full of birds, but nothing new—till I came out at the lake. While I stood looking out over the lake, a pretty sheet of water, surrounded mostly by cypress woods, but disfigured for the present by the doings of lumbermen. But, not to give up the ivory-bill too easily,—and because I must walk somewhere..."

FLORIDA BARRED OWL; ' Deer Owl'; 'Hoot Owl.'- Very common. Its deep, booming cry is sure to be heard at night, and is so characteristic of the Okefinokee that the natives use it as one of their signals when they are in trouble or far from home. The Barred Owl by night and the Red-shouldered Hawk by day furnish a round of weird and startling calls that one cannot soon forget. The former is a typical bird of the gloom-haunted cypress bays, the river bottoms of the Suwannee, and the small cypress ponds on the islands. It begins its calls in the late afternoon and continues them well into the evening. In the forenoon they may be heard until 9 or 10 o'clock, and occasionally throughout the hottest day. Several times its notes were uttered at midday when light rains were falling or impending. Besides its well-known resonant call, we heard a subdued, querulous note. The ' Deer Owl, ' exhibit considerable curiosity; they responded frequently to poor imitations of their cry, and sometimes to the ' squeak.'

"​The power of an alligator when closing its jaws and its power to keep its jaws closed is enormous. With a quick snap, it can crush the bones of a full-grown cow. I have an eleven foot alligator in my possession now, called Frank, who shortly after being caught had thrust between his gaping jaws a flat piece of two-inch-thick steel. He closed on this metal with such force, that the long ninth tooth on each side of his upper jaw was driven by the force of its closing on the metal clear through the bony top of his upper jaw, and the hollow ends of his teeth protruded above the bone. With an ordinary pair of heavy pliers, I caught hold of these teeth and pulled them through the jaw from the top, as they would never have grown back in place. The holes left healed over, but this alligator has never grown teeth where these were broken through."