BIRDS OF THE CAMBRIDGE REGION. 69 



there in summer, bred regularly on Boston Common. Yet the physical condi- 

 tions and immediate environment of this urban park were essentially the same 

 then as they are today. There are also neighborhoods lying near the heart of 

 Cambridge, which within the past thirty or forty years have changed but slightly 

 in respect to the number of houses, or in the extent and character of the gar- 

 dens and other open spaces, but from which the native birds above mentioned 

 disappeared, as they did from Boston, during the period of rapid increase and 

 general dispersion of the House Sparrow. 



EARLY WRITERS AND ORNITHOLOGISTS. 



Wood's ' New Englands Prospect,' Morton's ' New English Canaan,' and 

 Josselyn's ' New-Englands Rarities Discovered ' and ' Two Voyages to New- 

 England,' contain matter which relates more or less directly to the ornithology 

 of the Cambridge Region. They treat chiefly of a narrow coastal belt extend- 

 ing from Plymouth, Massachusetts, to Portland, Maine, and exclusively of periods 

 when most of this region was still either virgin wilderness or but sparsely and 

 recently settled. It is to be regretted that their authors had not more to say 

 of the birds which they met with, but their quaintly phrased testimony is per- 

 haps all the more interesting by reason of its very meagerness and often obscur- 

 ity. Although it has been repeatedly cited and discussed by ornithologists, ^ its 

 value and pertinence have been by no means fully brought out. As I have 

 had rather frequent occasion to quote from these early writers in the text of 

 my paper, it may be well to say here a few words concerning them and the 

 general character of their ornithological work. 



Thomas Morton was first on the ground, although his ' New English 

 Canaan' was not printed until 1637 (Mr. Adams thinks "there is ftrong inter- 

 nal evidence that" it "was written in 1634 "2), and hence three years after 

 Wood's ' New Englands Prospect ' was published. Morton made at least four 

 different visits to Massachusetts. On the first occasion he came over in the 

 summer of 1622 (less than two years after the first settlement of Plymouth) and 



1 J. A. Allen, Bulletin of the Nuttall Ornithological Club, I, 1876, 53-60; Memorial History 

 of Boston, I, 1880, 11-14. C. H. Merriam, Birds of Connecticut, 1877, 45 et sei/. W. Brewster in 

 ed. C. F. Adams, Jr., Thomas Morton, New English Canaan, 1883, 189-199. 



' C. F. Adams, Jr., Thomas Morton, New English Canaan, 1883, 78. 



