43(5 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



abundance of fish, fowl, wild fruits and good timber. 

 Francis Iligginson writes : " Fowls of the aire are plentiful 

 here. Here are likewise aboundance of turkies often killed 

 in the woods. This country doth abound with wild geese, 

 wild duckes, and other sea fowle, that a great part of the 

 winter the planters have eaten nothing but roastmeat of 

 divers fowles which they have killed." * 



Josselyn writes that he has known ' ' twelve score and 

 more of sanderlins " to be killed at two shots. f 



Morton says there was " greate store " of swans in the 

 Memmack River at their seasons, also "greate store" of 

 cranes in the country. He also speaks of two Indians hav- 

 ing seen a thousand turkeys in less than a day in the woods.J 



AVilliam "Woods speaks of the turkeys as being in flocks 

 of forty, sixty and one hundred birds. He says the set- 

 tlers shot, for their own use, those which went by their 

 doors. He speaks of vast flocks of wild pigeons passing 

 over where he was, and of " seeing neyther the beginning 

 nor ending, length or breadth of these Millions of Millions. 

 The shouting of the people, the rattling of gunnes and the 

 pelting of small shotte could not drive them out of their 

 course and so they continued for four or five houres together." 

 He describes great flights of Brant, gray geese, white geese 

 and wild ducks ; and says the gray geese stayed all winter 

 in these waters, while the others were seen only in spring 

 and fall. He asserts that some have killed a hundred geese 

 in a week, and fifty ducks or forty teal at a shot. The 

 " humilities " or "simplicities" as he calls them, referring 

 to shore birds, large and small, could be driven in a herd 

 like sheep, and shot " at a fit time," after which the living 

 would settle again among the dead. "I myself," he says, 

 " have killed twelve score at two shootes." 



Morton says that he has often had one thousand geese be- 

 fore the muzzle of his gun, and that the feathers of the geese 

 he had killed in a short time paid for all the powder and shot 

 he would use in a year. He speaks of seeing forty " par- 

 tridges" in one tree and sixty "quail" in another. Un- 



* " New England's plantation," by Francis Higginson, p. 11. 



f "Account of two voyages to New England," 1638-63, by J. Josselyn. 



} Morton's " New English Canaan," p. 74. 



