PINNATED GROUSE 211 



that living western grouse of any kind were intro- 

 duced into Massachusetts at so early a period." 



From the evidence given by Mr. Brewster and other 

 writers it may be assumed that the heath hen was 

 more or less abundant on the site of Boston at the time 

 that city was founded, and there is no reason why it 

 should not have been numerous in other favorable sit- 

 uations along the New England coast and to the south- 

 ward. Early writings tell us that it was so. It 

 was found along the seaboard south of New Jersey, 

 and the late C. S. Wescott, of Philadelphia, frequently 

 spoke of it as having occurred according to tradition 

 in Maryland and Delaware, on the shores of the 

 Chesapeake Bay and on the Peninsula of Maryland and 

 Virginia. 



Nuttall, as late as 1832, says of the heath hen: 

 "Along the Atlantic coast they are still met with on 

 the grouse plains of New Jersey, on the brushy 

 plains of Long Island, in similar shrubby barrens in 

 Westford, Conn., in the islands of Martha's Vineyard 

 on the south side of Massachusetts Bay, and formerly, 

 as probably in many other tracts, according to the 

 information which I have received from Lieut.- 

 Governor Winthrop, they were so common on the 

 ancient bushy site of the city of Boston that laboring 

 people or servants stipulated with their employers not 

 to have the heath hen brought to table oftener than a 

 few times in a week !" 



Linsley, in his list of Connecticut birds, eleven years 



