SPECIES EXTINCT OR EXTIRPATED. 491 



In Massachusetts Turkeys were most numerous in the oak 

 and chestnut woods, for there they found most food. They 

 were so plentiful in the hills bordering the Connecticut valley 

 that in 1711 they were sold in Hartford at one shilling four 

 pence each, and in 1717 they were sold in Northampton, 

 Mass., at the same price. From 1730 to 1735 the price of 

 those dressed was in Northampton about one and one-half 

 penny per pound. After 1766 the price was two and one- 

 half pence, and in 1788, three pence. A few years after 1800 

 it was four pence to six pence a pound, and about 1820, when 

 the birds had greatly decreased, the price per pound was from 

 ten to twelve and one-half cents. 



In the last part of the eighteenth century most of the Wild 

 Turkeys had been driven west of the Connecticut River, but 

 there were still a good many in the Berkshire Hills and along 

 the Connecticut valley on both sides of the river. 



Belknap (1792) says "they are now retired to the inland 

 mountainous country."^ In Connecticut in 1813 the last 

 recorded bird was seen, and a few were still left in Vermont in 

 1842.2 



De Kay (1844) wrote that the Turkey had disappeared 

 almost entirely from the Atlantic States, but that a few were 

 still to be found about Mt. Holyoke in Massachusetts, and in 

 Sussex County, N. J., as well as in some of the mountainous 

 parts of New York.^ 



Brewster states in his Birds of the Cambridge Region, that 

 the Wild Turkey was not exterminated in Concord, Mass., 

 only twenty miles from Boston, until after the beginning of 

 the nineteenth century. 



Emmons (1833) gives the Wild Turkey in his list as a rare 

 resident in Massachusetts, "now become scarce and nearly 

 extinct;" but in a footnote Dr. Hitchcock states that the bird 

 is frequently met with on Mt. Holj^oke.^ 



It generally is believed that the last specimen actually 



1 Belknap, Jeremy: History of New Hampshire, 1792, Vol. Ill, p. 170. 



'^ Chamberlain, Montague: Handbook of Ornithology, United States and Canada, 1891, Vol. II, 

 p. 21. 



3 De Kay, James E.: New York Fauna, 1844, Part II, p. 200. 



< Hitchcock, Edward: Report of the Geology, Mineralogy, Botany and Zoology of Massachu- 

 setts, 1835, p. 531. 



