No. 4.] REPORT OF STATE ORNrPHOLOGLST. 251 



purposes, and it slioul<l bo protectc d ])\ law at all times in all 

 the territory where it is now rare. 



Recovery of the Swifts, SwaUoics and Martins. 



iNotwithstanding the fact that thousands of chimney swifts, 

 swallows and martins, both adult and young, were destroyed 

 in the June storm of 1903, the diminution in the number of 

 these birds, if we except the martins, is not very noticeable 

 to-day. ]S"evertheless, the swallows and swifts are not nearly 

 so numerous in many localities as they were before the catas- 

 trophe of 1903. I have found no previous records of any 

 such widespread destruction of birds by the elements in this 

 Commonwealth, except in the case of the martins. 



Xuttall, writing in 1832, states that a few years previously, 

 after a rainy midsummer, many martins in the maritime 

 parts of Massachusetts were found dead in their boxes. -^ 



Sir Charles Lyell records that in the spring of 183G thou- 

 sands of these birds, with their young, died in their nests 

 during a storm of cold rain which lasted two weeks, and de- 

 stroyed the insects throughout the States of Xew York and 

 ]^ew England.- Either this storm or the one spoken of by 

 ]^uttall probably was referred to by Dr. Brewer in a notice 

 quoted by Audubon in 1838, in which he mentions the then 

 recent destruction of martins in Massachusetts by a storm.^ 



Prof. John L. Russell of Salem stated in 1864 that purple 

 martins were then very rare in that vicinity, because 

 of a long-continued cold rain and the consequent want of 

 suitable food, which killed them by scores, so that few had 

 been seen since.* Probably he refers not to the great storm 

 mentioned by Sir Charles Lyell, but to a later and more local 

 catastrophe. It is evident that the martins recovered from 

 the former decimation, for they were locally abundant in 

 Massachusetts in after years, and so late as the time when the 

 house sparrow was introduced from Europe. Since then the 



> Nuttall, Thomas, "Manual of the Ornithology of the United States and Canada. 

 The Land Birds," 1832, p. 599. 



2 Lyell, Sir Charles, " A Second Visit to the United States of Xortli America," 1849, 

 Vol. I., p. 36. 



3 Aiidulion, John James, " Ornithological Biography," Vol. V., ISU), p. 40S. 



« Russell, Jolin I^., " The Natural Phenomena of the Seasons," annual report of the 

 Commissioner of Agriculture for 18G4, p. 354, published in IS 5. 



