INTRODUCTORY OliSERVATIONS. 13 



gard to the Wild Turkey. It is not yet half a century since 

 these birds, the noblest wild game of the Gallinaceous order, 

 abounded on the slopes of the Warwick and Musconetcong 

 Mountains; in the Shawangunks ; and, in a, word, throughout 

 the whole length of the great chain, which connects the White 

 Mountains of the north, with the Alleghanies proper. I have 

 myself conversed with sportsmen, in the river counties of New 

 York, who, in their boyhood, thought less of killing their half- 

 dozen Wild Turkeys in the morning, than we should now-a-days 

 of bagging as many Ruffed Grouse. At present, with the ex- 

 ception of a few stragglers which, I believe, still exist on the 

 Connecticut, about the rocky steeps of Mount Tom and Mount 

 Holyoake, and a single drove, which are reported to be seen 

 occasionally among the hill-fastnesses at the lower end of the 

 Greenwood Lake, on the frontiers of New York and New Jersey, 

 none are to be found until we reach the western regions of 

 Pennsylvania. And, in fact, as a bird of sport, they are not, 

 any where on the eastern side of the great Apalachian chain. 



The Deer and the greater American Hare, which turns white 

 in winter, are likewise already extinct in many places, 

 where both could be captured, within the last twenty years, 

 in such numbers as to afford both sport and profit to their pur- 

 suers. 



In New Jersey, and in New York, south of the forty-second 

 degree of north latitude, with the exception of a small number 

 carefully preserved on the brush-plains of Long Island, the Deer, 

 Cervus Virginianus, has ceased to exist. And it requires no 

 prophetic eye to see the day when this pride of the North Ame- 

 rican forest shall have ceased to have its habitation any where 

 eastward of Pennsylvania ; unless it be in the remote northern 

 forests of Maine, in the mountains of New Hampshire and Ver- 

 mont, and in that small district of New York, lying between the 

 head waters of the Hudson, Lake Champlain, the St. Lawrence, 

 and the eastern extremity of Ontario — which latter tract, owing 

 to its singularly rugged and unproductive character, will proba- 

 bly contain the Deer, the Moose, the Cariboo, the Panther, and 



