58 BULLETIN OF THE NUTTALL 



In all the early notices of the natural productions of New 

 England, the Crane is mentioned among the few birds usually 

 enumerated. Emmons gives the Whooping Crane (Grits america- 

 1111s) in his list of the birds of Massachusetts, but subsequent 

 writers have genei'ally 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 northwai'd in summer far beyond New Eng- 

 land. Neither species has of late been met with north of New 

 Jersej', 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 

 never would misse. These doe sometimes eate our corne, and do 

 pay for their presumption well enough ; and serveth there in pow- 

 ther, with turnips to supply the place of powthered beefe, and is 

 a goodly bird in a dish, and no discommodity."* This shows that 

 the Crane, and not a Heron, is the bird to which reference is made. 



The Swan ( Cyf/mts americanus) is in a similar way enumerated 

 by different early writers as formerly a common bird of Massachu- 

 setts, though of late years it appears only in our lists of casual 

 visitors. Morton, more explicit than most writers of his time who 

 refer to it, says, in beginning his account of the birds : " And first 

 the Swanne, because shee is the biggest of all the fowles of that 

 Country. There are of them in Merrimack River, and in other 

 parts of the country, greate store at the seasons of the yeare. The 

 flesh is not much desired of by the inhabitants, but the skinnes 

 may be accompted a commodity, fitt for divers uses, both for 

 fethers, and quiles."t 



The Great Auk (Alca impennis) has recently been added to the 

 list of the birds of the State, on account of the occurrence of its 

 bones in the Indian shell-heaps at Ipswich. There is little reason 

 to doubt, however, that the bird called " Pengwin," or " Penguin," 

 mentioned as found from Cape Cod northward at the time Euro- 

 peans first visited this coast, really refers to the Great Auk. It 

 figures in all the early enumerations of the birds of New England 



* New English Canaan, p. 69. 

 t lb., p. 67. 



