42 memoirs of the nuttall ornithological club. 



The Fresh Pond Swamps or Fresh Pond Marshes. 



These terms have been appHed indifferently or synonymously since the 

 time of Nuttall to a wide expanse of flat, low country lying chiefly within the 

 present limits of Cambridge, to the northward of Fresh Pond, but also extend- 

 ing somewhat into Arlington and Belmont. When I first came to know this 

 region, forty years or more ago, it was beautifully diversified by wooded or bushy 

 swamps alternating with open, grassy marshes. There were also (near its cen- 

 ter) two isolated — and hence very conspicuous — round-topped hills. Alewife 

 Brook was then directly connected with Fresh Pond, and its principal tributary. 

 Little River, with Spy Pond. There were lesser channels, of sluggishly flowing 

 water, and innumerable shallow pools and small ponds fringed by reeds or bushes 

 and varying from a few yards to an acre or more in extent. Many of these 

 still remain, but nearly all the woods and both the isolated hills have long since 

 disappeared, while hundreds of houses and other buildings have sprung up on 

 every hand close about the outskirts of the swamps. Certain of the larger 

 marshes, such as those immediately to the north and west of the Glacialis, have 

 not as yet been materially reduced in area, but, owing partly to their present 

 imperfect drainage, and also as the result of fires, ^ by which they were devas- 

 tated about twenty years ago, they are now almost constantly submerged and 

 grown up very extensively to cattail flags. 



In the earlier days Alewife Brook and Little River, with their numerous 

 tributary brooks and rivulets, being free from the various obstructions which 

 have since been permitted to choke their channels, performed their natural func- 

 tions so effectively that by the middle or end of summer we frecjuently walked 

 dry-shod over the extensive and now invariably flooded marshes which lie 

 between the Glacialis and Little River, and the meadow grass which covered 

 them was regularly cut and drawn off in hay wagons. The water in the brooks, 

 and even in pools and ditches which had no visible outlets, although warm and 

 muddy at times, was by no means unpalatable, and we drank it without hesita- 

 tion when nothing better could be had, for the entire region was then uncon- 

 taminated by sewage or other dangerous pollution, as well as wholly free from 

 malaria by which it has been of late so grievously afflicted. 



To J. Elliot Cabot, however, the Fresh Pond Swamps seemed, at a time 

 (1869) not long after that when I first began to frequent them, a "dreary waste 



'These fires burned for weeks, eating deep into the peaty soil, uprooting trees and bushes, 

 and utterly destroying the meadow grasses. During the following year the devastated tract was 

 nearly barren of vegetation, but by degrees it became covered with flags. 



