7° 



MEMOIRS OF THE NUTTALL ORNITHOLOGICAL CLUB. 



Josselyn means the Kingbird or perhaps the Purple Martin when he says 1 : 

 " There is a small Ash-colour Bird that is shaped like a Hawke with talons and 

 beak that falleth upon Crowes, mounting up into the Air after them, and will 

 beat them till they make them cry." The following is also intelligible: 2 "The 

 singing Birds are Thrushes with red breasts which will be very fat and are good 

 meat, so are the Thressels, Filladies are small singing Birds, Ninmurders little 

 yellow Birds .... and Starlings black as Ravens with scarlet pinions." What 

 he means by the following is somewhat obscure : " The Colibry, I lemalin, or 

 rising or walking Bird, are emblemn of the Resurrection, and the wonder of little 

 Birds." 



The Hummingbird was evidently a marvel in the eyes of the early explor- 

 ers. Thus Wood says : " The Humbird is one of the wonders of the Countrey, 

 being no bigger than a Hornet, yet hath all the demensions of a Bird, as bill, 

 and wings, with quills, spider-like legges, small clawes : For colour, she is as glo- 

 rious as the Raine-bow ; as she flies, she makes a little humming noise like a Hum- 

 ble-bee : wherefore shee is called the Humbird." 



The earliest local list for Essex County is the Catalogue of Birds noticed in 

 the Vicinity of Lynn during the Years of i844-'5-'6, by J. B. Holder, published 

 in 1846, by the Lynn Natural History Society. This is a list of 185 species. 

 The only list of birds for the whole of Essex County is that of F. W. Putnam 

 entitled Catalogue of the Birds of Essex County, Massachusetts, and pub- 

 lished in the Proceedings of the Essex Institute, volume 1, page 201, 1856. He 

 gives as birds of the County, 235; accidental visitors, 10; making a total of 

 245. Twelve of these are omitted in my list as of doubtful, erroneous, or 

 apocryphal record. Putnam states that there were 48 other birds known to 

 have been found in the State but not in Essex County, making a total for the 

 State, according to him, of 293. Robinson, 3 in his introduction to Hurd's His- 

 tory of Essex County, in 1888, put the number of birds for Essex County 

 at 266. 



Mr. C. J. Maynard published, in 1870, in his Naturalist's Guide, a Cata- 

 logue of the Birds of Eastern Massachusetts, and although this includes much 

 more than Essex County, it is of especial interest here, as the author had for 

 several years been living at Ipswich, and many of the observations were made 

 there. In this list, in the edition of 1873, page 161, he states that "the whole 

 number of birds belonging to the fauna of eastern Massachusetts is two hundred 

 and ninety-nine, as will be seen by the Catalogue." In this connection it is 



1 lohn Josselyn: An Account of two Voyages to New England, 1675; p. 275 of 1833 reprint. 



2 John Josselyn : ibid., p. 278. 



3 John Robinson : in Hind's History of Kssex County, Massachusetts, vol. I, p. lxxxii, 1888. 



