288 AMERICAN GAME BIRD SHOOTING 



from southern Colorado south through Arizona and 

 New Mexico, and grades into the Mexican turkey on 

 the south and into the eastern wild turkey on the east. 

 On all streams flowing east from the Rocky Mountains 

 over the great plains, from the Niobrara, which is near 

 the northern boundary of Nebraska, south nearly to 

 the Rio Grande, turkeys were formerly common, and 

 these were the ordinary bird of the Mississippi Valley. 

 They lived along these various rivers, many of which 

 have their heads in the mountains, and following up 

 these streams to the mountains, there intergrade with 

 the mountain bird. E. W. Nelson has shown where this 

 takes place. 



In these days, when the common wild turkey is ex- 

 tinct over much of its former range, it is very difficult 

 to define with exactness the former boundaries of that 

 range. We know that it was abundant in southern 

 New England and to the south. Audubon speaks of it 

 rather vaguely as found in southern Vermont, New 

 Hampshire and Maine, and it is certain that it was 

 once very abundant in Massachusetts, where many 

 years ago I saw a skin taken at Mt. Tom about 1848 

 or 1849. 



Wm. Brewster, in his admirable volume on the 

 "Birds of the Cambridge Region of Massachusetts," 

 published in 1906, as No. IV of the Memoirs of the 

 Nuttall Ornithological Club, has gathered much inter- 

 esting information concerning the turkey in eastern 

 Massachusetts and in Maine. He says : 



"Morton, referring, no doubt, to his experience at 



