126 MEMOIRS OF THE NUTTALL ORNITHOLOGICAL CLUB. 



there were six. The next morning Cambridge Nook was frozen over and the 

 Ruddy Ducks had disappeared, not to return again that season. They reap- 

 peared the following autumn, as I am informed by Mr. Richard S. Eustis, on 

 October 22, when eight birds were seen. After this date they were almost 

 constantly present in numbers varying from one or two to fifteen or twenty, 

 while on October 31 twenty-two were counted by Mr. Eustis. It is to be hoped 

 that they, like the Black Ducks, have at length discovered that Fresh Pond, once 

 so perilous a halting-place for all their tribe, has become a safe haven of refuge, 

 and that they will continue to visit it in ever increasing numbers, for they are 

 among the most interesting of our water-fowl. 



Mr. Warren E. Freeman writes me under date of January 11, 1903, that 

 at Spy Pond no less than thirty-two Dumb-birds were killed, and ten or fifteen 

 others seen, on October 19, 1901, and that his note-books show that since he 

 began shooting there in 1895 from twenty to thirty-five have fallen to his own 

 gun every autumn. He does not think, however, that the total number taken 

 in any one season during this period has ever exceeded fifty birds. These state- 

 ments indicate that, despite the incessant persecution to which they are still sub- 

 jected at Spy Pond, the Ruddy Ducks have occurred more numerously there, 

 of late, than at Fresh Pond. At the Mystic Ponds, however, according to 

 Mr. George B. Frazar, very few have been seen during the past ten or twelve 

 years. 



On June 22, 1890, a male Ruddy Duck in full breeding plumage was killed 

 in Charles River not far from the Watertown Arsenal, and directly opposite 

 Faneuil Station, by a Mr. Rivet, who took the bird, next day, to Mr. M. Abbott 

 Frazar by whom it was "mounted. This specimen is now in my collection. Mr. 

 Frazar tells me that it was alone when shot, but that another Duck, apparently 

 of the same species, was reported to have been seen with it shortly before its 

 capture. 



[Chen hyperborea (Pall.). Lesser Snow Goose. Chen hyperborea nivalis (For.st.). 

 Greater Snow Goose. All three of the earlj writers so often quoted in this paper speak of 

 v/hite Geese in terms which indicate that these birds were of rather common and regular occur- 

 rence in eastern Massachusetts when the country' was first settled; at that time they doubtless 

 visited the Cambridge Region, although of this we have no definite proof. Morton sajs : 

 "There are Geefe of three forts vize brant Geefe, which are pide, and white Geefe which are big- 

 ger, and gray Geefe which are as bigg and bigger then the tame Geefe of England.'" Josselyn 

 enumerates "the Gray Goofe, the W/iiie Goofe, and the Brant" adding, "I once found in a 

 Wkile Goofe three Hearts. "^ Wood states that the "white Goofe" is "almoft as big as an 



1 Thomas Morton, New English Canaan, 1637, 67. Ed. C. F.Adams, Jr., 1883, 189-190. 

 'John Josselyn, New-Englands Rarities Discovered, 1672, 9. E. Tuckerman's ed., 1865, 42, 43. 



