BIEDS OF EAST PENNSYLVANIA. 49 



numbers. In a rare tract printed in 1648, entitled "A Description 

 of New Albion " — a name at one time applied to this part of the 

 country — we read of four or five hundred Turkeys forming a 

 single flock. The Pinnated Grouse {Cupidonia cupido) is another 

 interesting bird which has become nearly extinct in East Penn- 

 sylvania, and entirely so, it is believed, in New Jersey. The 

 Whooping Crane {Qrus Americanits) may also be said to have 

 disappeared, not even a straggler having been seen for some years. 

 It likewise seems to have been once very j^lentiful; for we read 

 in Hakluyt's Voyages, Ed. 1589, fol. 729, that Captain Philip 

 Amadas and his fellow-adventurers, who visited and explored the 

 coast in the year 1584, "having discharged their harquebus-shot, 

 such a flocke of Cranes (the most part white) arose, with such a 

 crye, re-doubled by many ecchoes, as if an arniie of men had 

 showted altogether." The Brown or Sandhill Crane {Grus Cana- 

 densis) has not been seen in this region for many years past, 

 although it is still not imcommon in the west. The learned 

 Professor Kalm, who travelled in this country in 1748-49, and 

 resided some time at Swedesborough, N. J., noticed this bird on its 

 northern flight about the middle of February. At that time they 

 usually alighted, but remained for a short time only, every Spring, 

 in comparatively limited numbers; but he was assured by a 

 colonist, above ninety years of age, that in his youth (or about the 

 year 1670) Cranes came in hundreds. The Eough-billed Pelican 

 (Pelecanus erythrorhynchus) was also frequent on the Hudson and 

 the Delaware, but is now a very rare visitant to the last-men- 

 tioned river only. 



While ornithologists, however, have to deplore the diminution 

 in the number of the more conspicuous birds which has taken place 

 during the last century, it is gratifying to find a very sensible 

 increase in the number of other species. Many of the Warblers, 

 for example, then considered rare, are now found to be abundant — 

 a beneficial increase, for which we are no doubt indebted to the 

 fact of our eSicient game laws providing for the protection of 

 insectivorous birds. But on the other hand, the constant shooting 

 of "Bay Snipe" and shore birds generally, by market gunners, 

 always on the watch for their arrival, has seriously reduced the 

 flocks of many species formerly known to abound in districts now 

 but thinly peopled by this interesting class. The late Mr George 



