474 GAME BIRDS. WILD-FOWL AND SHORE BIRDS. 



Undoubtedly the Trumpeter passed in migration from 

 Long Island Sound and the mouth of the Hudson into Canada 

 and the Hudson Bay country, where it bred, going through 

 some of the New England States on the way north or on its 

 southward migration. So late as the sixth decade of the nine- 

 teenth century it was still to be met with in Ontario, Can., 

 where, so Fleming states, Professor Hincks described a sup- 

 posed new species of Swan in 18G4, which proved to be the 

 young of the Trumpeter, and between 1863 and 1866 he was 

 able to get six local birds to examine.^ 



Morton (1632) stated that there was " greate store " of 

 Swans at their seasons in the Merrimac River and in other 

 parts of the country. Some of the Swans mentioned as fre- 

 quenting the fresh-water ponds and rivers probably were of 

 this species, and several small bodies of water in Massachu- 

 setts have derived their names from the Swan. A place called 

 " Swan Holt " by the first settlers of Carver, Mass., probably 

 denotes the visits of this species. Here, before the ice was 

 broken up in the ponds, the Swan, " the earliest harbinger of 

 spring," found an open place among the osier holts. ^ The 

 Trumpeter was noted because of its early appearance in 

 spring. It often appeared in March, before ponds were open. 



In the History of Harvard, Mass., it is stated that the 

 Swan occasionally was seen in colonial times, and gave name 

 to the long swamp where Still River has its source.^ 



The Trumpeter Swan long ago disappeared from the New 

 England seaboard, except as a mere straggler; so long ago that 

 there is no specimen extant from New England, and no 

 definite record or date of the capture of a specimen here. 

 (Dr. G. H. Perkins informs me that a bird of this species 

 was taken recently at Lake Champlain, but I have not 

 yet seen the specimen.) The bird formerly was common 

 from New York west to the Pacific coast States. It bred 

 in Indiana, Missouri, Nebraska, Montana and Idaho, and the 

 northwest provinces, and probably in Minnesota, Iowa and 

 farther east before the time of ornithological records. De Kay 



» Flemina:, James H.: Auk, 1906, p. 446. 



2 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc, Vol. IV, 2d scr., p. 274. 



a Nourse, Henry S.: The History of Harvard, Mass., from 1732 to 1893, ed. of 1894, p. 73. 



