200 



MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTUEE. 



of practising rifle-sliooting killed upwards of forty in one 

 morning, but picked up none of them, so satiated with grouse 



was he as well as every member 

 of his family. My own servants 

 preferred the fattest flitch of ba- 

 con to their flesh, and not unfre- 

 quently laid them aside as unfit 

 for food." Twenty-five years af- 

 ter the same author says, "Such 

 an account may appear strange, 

 but in that same country where, 



Fig. 12.— Redstart. Setophaga ruticilla. tWCUty-fivC yCarS agO , they COUld 



not have been sold for more than one cent apiece, scarcely 

 one is now to be found. The grouse have abandoned the 

 State of Kentucky and removed (like the Indian) every sea- 

 son further to the westward to escape from the murderous 

 white man." The bird above mentioned was once probably 

 very abundant in all the southern New England States, but 

 is now only found in small numbers on Martha's Vineyard and 

 one or two other islands ofi" the southern coast of Massachu- 

 setts, being entirely extinct on the main land of New England. 



Mr. J. A. Allen says : * " The mam- 

 malian and bird faunas of all the older 

 settled parts of the United States are 

 vastly diflerent from what they were 

 two hundred years ago. These chan- 

 ges consist mainly in the great de- 

 crease in number of all the larger 

 species, not a few of which are already 

 extirpated where they were formerly 

 common. A few of the smaller spe- 

 cies of both classes have doubtless 

 increased in numbers. Many of our 

 water-fowl that are now only transient 

 visitors, — as the Canada goose, the 

 several species of Merganser, teals, black duck and mallard, — 

 undoubtedly once bred in this State (Massachusetts), as did 

 also the wild turkey and prairie hen." An old farmer of 

 Essex County recently told us that fifteen years ago the pas- 

 * " American Naturalist," Vol. III., No. 10. 



Fig. 13. — ^American Shrike. C. bo- 

 realis. 



