472 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



ther than this, for many adult birds were overcome and 

 perished from exposure and starvation combined. 



Four correspondents report finding adult robins or vireos 

 dead. Others report a significant disappearance of adult 

 birds of several species. Mr. JVIosher found a male bluebird 

 exhausted on June 25. The bird was picked up and cared 

 for, recovered, and later with its mate brought off a second 

 brood. 



Swallows, martins and swifts perished by hundreds in 

 eastern Massachusetts. In some sections the swifts appear 

 to have been exterminated. Practically all of the young of 

 the purple martins died, while in a large section of the State 

 from Buzzard's Bay to the New Hampshire line most of the 

 adult birds seem to have perished. Only four correspond- 

 ents report seeing any living martins in Massachusetts since 

 the end of the storm period, and those four saw only a few 

 birds each. 



The mortality among barn swallows seems to have been 

 greatest in Plymouth and Barnstable counties. Many young 

 barn swallows starved to death in these and other counties. 

 Miss Isabel B. Holbrook of Rockland, Plymouth County, 

 states that a resident of Hanover counted eighty dead barn 

 swallows, mostly young, around his farm buildings ; and 

 that Albert E. Vinton, while at Chatham on Cape Cod, 

 noticed that barn swallows were dying, and counted ten 

 washed up on the shore by the waves. Mr. J. H. Bourne 

 of Marshfield, Plymouth County, saw the usual numbers of 

 swallows in the spring, but after the storm only a few. Mr. 

 William R. Lord of Rockland asserts that the young barn 

 swallows died, and that " the old birds seem to have gone 

 to the coast for beach flies." 



Mr. Marcus M. Porter of Stoughton, Norfolk County, saw 

 no barn swallows after the storm, but Mr. Clias. F. Curtis 

 of the same town reports the same number in his barn as 

 usual. Mr. F. P. Hammond of JNIashpec states that ver}'' 

 few swallows returned when the storm was over. Mr. Bangs 

 says that at Wareham all the young barn SAvallows perished. 

 He picked up several a few da>^s out of the nest, but in a 

 dying condition. At the Mosher place in Dartmouth all the 



