GRUS AMERICANA I WHOOPING CRANE. 



Whooping Crane (Grus americana) in his list of the 

 birds of Massachusetts, but subsequent authors have 

 generally believed without due authority, and of late it 

 has been wholly lost sight of as a bird of the State. 

 That some species of Crane, and in all probability both 

 species, was common in New England in early times is 

 beyond question. Both the Sandhill and the Whooping 

 Cranes have still a wide range in the interior, passing 

 northward in summer far beyond New England. 

 Neither species has of late been met with north of New 

 Jersey, where the Whooping Crane occurs only as a 

 rare casual visitor. Morton wrote, of ' Cranes, there are 

 greate store, that ever more came there at S. Davids 

 day, and not before ; that day they would never misse. 

 These doe sometimes eate our corne, and do pay for 

 their presumption well enough ; and serveth there in 

 powther, with turnips to supply the place of powthered 

 beefe, and is a goodly bird in a dishe, and no discom- 

 modity.' * This shows that the Crane, and not a 

 Heron, is the bird to which reference is made." 



In 1842, Zadock Thompson still speaks of the Whoop- 

 ing Crane as " occasionally seen during its migrations " 

 in Vermont (Hist. Vermont, 1842, p. 103). 



BROWN, OR SAND-HILL CRANE. 

 GRUS PRATENSIS Bartr. 



Chars. Smaller than the last, and in adult plumage plumbeous-gray, 

 never whitening ; primaries, their coverts, and the alula, ashy- 



* New English Canaan. Printed by Charles Greene, 1632. 

 Reprinted in Force's Historical Tracts, vol. ii, tract 5, pp. 47, 48. 



