BIRDS HUNTED FOR FOOD OR SPORT. 115 



as above. Mr. Robert O. ^Morris has seen it formerly on the 

 Connecticut River in large flocks, but that was unusual. 

 The reports of increase in this species come as follows by 

 counties: Barnstable, five; Dukes, five; Bristol, one; Plym- 

 outh, one; but only in Dukes County are they unanimous 

 as to increase. Fifteen Massachusetts observers all told 

 report an increase; thirty-four, a decrease. 



Mr. John M. Winslow says that Redheads remain about 

 the same in Nantucket, — not over a thousand on the island. 

 Mr. Lewis W. Hill of Jamaica Plain says that Redheads and 

 Bluebills are very plentiful at Edgartown, and that Bluebills 

 have increased slightly in the "last five years." He believes 

 that there are from five thousand to eight thousand Ducks 

 every year in Edgartown Great Pond. A party of four men 

 got one hundred and ten Redheads and Bluebills in five 

 hours, and many bags of twenty to fifty w^ere made in the 

 fall of 1908. In that year, he says, there were many more 

 Bluebills than Redheads; in the last three or four years 

 the reverse has been true. Mr. Henry V. Greenough of 

 Brookline says that about twenty-five hundred Redheads and 

 Bluebills come into the Edgartown and Tisbury great ponds 

 in the fall from October 1 to 15; rarely more come and seldom 

 many less. At daybreak every day they leave Edgartown 

 Great Pond and fly to Tisbury Pond, where the "feed" is 

 more to their liking, spend the da}^ there and return toward 

 night to Edgartown. Some stop over at Fresh Pond and 

 Oyster Pond. The number has not decreased and about the 

 same number of birds are killed each year. Mr. Charles H. 

 Brown of Vineyard Haven stated before the legislative com- 

 mittee on Fisheries and Game, in 1910, that the ponds on the 

 south side of Martha's Vineyard were broken open by the sea 

 in 1815 and flooded with salt water, so that they remained 

 salt for years. This changed the character of the vegetable 

 growth in those ponds. Some of them remained salt longer 

 than others which earlier became fresh or brackish. From 

 1872 to about 1878 Edgartown Great Pond was salt as a result 

 of artificial opening. Redhead grass (probably Naias flexilis 

 and Potamogeton perfoliatus) grows in Great Pond. Various 



