ic6 MEMOIRS OF THE NUTTALL ORNITHOLOGICAL CLUB. 



another was seen on December i, and again on the 8th of the same month, 

 in the Wren Orchard, near Arhngton Heights, by Mr. Richard S. Eustis. 

 Strictly speaking these are winter dates, but I am inchned to believe that both 

 of the birds to which they relate were merely belated migrants on their way 

 still further to the southward. 



59. Gallinago delicata (Ord). 

 Wilson's Snipe. English Snipe. 



Transient visitor in spring and autumn, formerly abundant, still common. 



seasonal occurrence. 



March 20, 1871, one taken, Belmont, W. Brewster. 



April 6 — May 6. 

 May 18, 1890, one seen and heard, Pout Pond, W. Brewster. 



September 5, 1868, three seen, Cambridge, W. Brewster. 



September 12 — November 15. 

 November 23, 1868, several seen, Arlington, W. Brewster. 



According to a statement made to me by the late Dr. Samuel Cabot, shortly 

 before his death, Wilson's Snipe used to occur in sufficient numbers to afford 

 really good shooting, sixty-five or seventy years ago, in the then vacant and ill- 

 drained but now thickly settled regions, lying between Broadway and Cambridge 

 Street near Harvard College, and, also, to the south of Dana Hill in Cam- 

 bridgeport. The birds had ceased to frequent these localities before 1865, 

 although I remember starting a stray one in 1867 or 1868 in afield at the 

 corner of Fayette Street and Broadway, within fifty yards of the Cambridge 

 High School. Up to 1870 or a little later Wilson's Snipe were regularly found 

 in spring about wet hollows in the mowing fields and pastures bordering Vassall 

 Lane, and so numerously at times that I have flushed upwards of fifty there in 

 a single afternoon. The brook meadows extending along both sides of the 

 Fitchburg Railroad between Hill's Crossing and Belmont were also excellent 

 spring grounds in those days, as well as for ten or fifteen years afterwards, and 

 the Brickyard Swamp, up to the time of its obliteration, always harbored a good 

 many birds in both autumn and spring. But at both seasons and since time 

 immemorial, whenever they were neither too wet nor too dry to afford good 

 feeding grounds, the broad, unreclaimed marshes bordering Alewife Brook and 



