



THE WILD TURKEY 289 



Merrymount, now Wollaston, only a few miles south 

 of the Cambridge region, where he lived from 1625 

 to 1628, and again in 1629 and 30, says : 'Great flocks 

 (of turkeys) have f allied by our doores; ... I had a 

 Salvage who hath taken out his boy in a morning, and 

 they have brought home their loades about noone. I 

 have asked them what number they found in the woods, 

 who have answered, Neent Metawna, which is a tho- 

 sand that day/ Wood confirms this by stating that 

 'sometimes there will be forty, three score, and an hun- 

 dred of a flocke, sometimes more and sometimes lesse ; 

 their feeding is Acornes, Hawes and Berries, some of 

 them get a haunt to frequent our English come: In 

 Winter when the Snow covers the ground they resort 

 to the Seashore to looke for Shrimps and such small 

 Fishes at low tides. Such as love Turkic hunting must 

 follow it in Winter after a new falne Snow, when he 

 may follow them by their tracts; some have killed ten 

 or a dozen in halfe a day ; if they can be found towards 

 an evening and watched where they peirch, if one come 

 about ten or eleaven of the clocke he may shoote as 

 often as he will, they will sit unlesse they be slenderly 

 wounded. These Turkic remaine al the yeare long, the 

 price of a good Turkic cocke is foure shillings ; and he 

 is well worth it for he may be in weight 40 pound ; a 

 Hen two shillings/ Josslyn mentions seeing, probably 

 at Black Point (now Scarborough), Maine, 'threescore 

 broods of young Turkies on the side of a Marsh, sun- 

 ning of themselves in a morning betimes, but this was 

 thirty years since [in 1638 or 1639], the English and 



