v °g g ?n Mack ay on the Knot. 29 



On the Dennis marshes and flats, at Chatham, theNauset, Well- 

 fleet, and Billingsgate, Cape Cod, and on the flats around Tuck- 

 ernuck and Muskeget Islands, Mass., they used to be more num- 

 erous than in all the rest of New England combined, and being 

 very gregarious they would collect in those places in exceedingly 

 large numbers, estimates of which were useless. This was pre- 

 vious to 1S50 and when the Cape Cod railroad was completed 

 only to Sandwich. Often, when riding on the top of the stage 

 coach on the Cape beyond this point, immense numbers of these 

 birds could be seen, as they rose up in clouds, during the period 

 that they sojourned there. It was at this time that the vicious 

 practice of 'fire-lighting' them prevailed, and a very great number 

 of them were thus killed on the flats at night in the vicinity 

 of Billingsgate (near Wellfleet) . The mode of procedure was 

 for two men to start out after dark at half tide, one of them to 

 carry a lighted lantern, the other to reach and seize the birds, 

 bite their necks, and put them in a bag slung over the shoulder. 

 When near a flock they would approach them on their hands and 

 knees the birds being almost invariably taken on the flats. This 

 practice continued several years before it was finally prohibited 

 by law. I have it directly from an excellent authority that he 

 has seen in the spring, six barrels of these birds (all of which had 

 been taken in this manner) at one time, on the deck of the Cape 

 Cod packet for Boston. He has also seen barrels of them, which 

 had spoiled during the voyage, thrown overboard in Boston Harbor 

 on arrival of the packet. The price of these birds at that time 

 was ten cents per dozen ; mixed with them would be Turnstones 

 and Black-bellied Plover. Not one of these birds had been shot, 

 all having been taken with the aid of a 'fire-light.' 



As they appear on our shores each season at about the same 

 date as the Black-bellied Plover, which, however, they formerly 

 alwavs greatly outnumbered, I venture to suggest for the Knots 

 the same possibility of a change of habitat and of lines of migra- 

 tion that I did when considering the cause of that bird's lessened 

 numbers (Auk, IX, 143). I consider the case of the Knots a 

 much more aggravated one than that of the Black-bellied Plover, 

 the Knots having been reduced to a much greater extent in my 

 opinion by having been killed. Besides those destroyed on Cape 

 Cod through the agency of 'fire-lights,' I have reasons for believ- 

 ing that they have been shot also in large numbers on the 



