70 



The Canadian Field- Naturalist 



[Vol. XXXIII 



Pepin, in Minnesota,"' and if they were seen as early 

 as this they may have been common enough even a 

 century earlier. The bird was once fairly plentiful 

 m South Dakota. The Mandans knew the turkey, 

 but no archaeological remains of the bird have so 

 far been fcund on prehistoric Mandan sites. 



Now, turning again to the map, it will be ob- 

 served that the farthest western archaeological oc- 

 currence of what was probably M. g. silvestris is 

 in southwestern Missouri,^ ' the farthest southern in 

 middle Florida and the farthest northern, in cen- 

 tral Ontario. The occurrences in New Mexico and 

 Arizona are most probably these of semi-domes- 

 ticated M. g. merriami ; at least the dessicated bodies 

 with well preserved feathers, found in some ruins 

 there, have been identified as Merriam's turkey. 

 Our knowledge of the prehistoric range of the wild 

 turkey, however, although slightly extended in one 

 direction, is probably very incomplete. This is 

 due to several reasons, one being that some regions 

 may not have been inhabited by the turkey, the 

 faunal areas occupied by Merriam's turkey and the 

 Rio Grande turkey, for instance, being separated by 

 a broad belt of desert country where the bird could 

 not possibly exist. Then, again, other regions, in- 

 habited by the turkey, were perhaps unsuitable for 

 human inhabitants, and, in some areas, where there 

 were human inhabitants, the bones of the birds for 

 some reason may not have found their way to refuse 

 heaps and mounds, or other archaeological remains. 

 Another cause, and I think this is probably the 

 principal one, is that in some regions archaeological 

 work, if done at all, has not been done thoroughly ; 

 in short, it was not considered worth while to col- 

 lect animal bones. In many instances also the 

 identity of the bones, which may have been col- 

 lected, has never been determined, and the com- 

 plete results of the exploration are therefore not 

 known. 



What interesting results could be obtained had 

 we the necessary data! Notwithstanding the in- 

 completeness of our map, it may yet be interesting 

 to ornithologists as showing where the turkey did 

 exist in prehistoric times. 



The very incompleteness of the map will, never- 

 theless, serve to emphasize how important it is for 

 all future archaeological work to be done in a 

 thorough, systematic manner. 



PREHISTORIC RANGE OF THE GREAT AUK. 



Archaeological finds of bones of the Great Auk 



■■i!»TravfI.s ihroufe'li the Interior Part.s of Xorlli 

 America, etc; Third edition, (London, 1781), p. 56. 



4><('. N. fiDuid in his "Prohislorif .Mounds in 

 Cowley county," (Kansas), .speaks of finding the 

 bones of a galllnaceou.s bird, which may have been 

 those of the turkey. (Transactions of ih.- Kansas 

 Academy of Science, 1895-1896 (Topeka, 1898), Vol. 

 XV. p. hO). 



(Plautus impetmis (Linn.)), whose range on the 

 European side of the Atlantic was from= Iceland to 

 the Bay of Biscay and on the American side from 

 Greenland to Virginia, have helped to extend our 

 knowledge of the former range of this bird consider- 

 ably. This was interestingly shown in a map by 

 Lucas in 1889.^^ Further evidence has been dis- 

 covered since this map appeared and I take the 

 liberty of presenting one here on a larger scale 

 giving the location of these recent additions to our 

 knowledge. The known summer and winter ranges 

 are as indicated on the Lucas map, but to in- 

 dicate the archaeological evidence I am using a 

 symbol which stands out more distinctly than that 

 used by him. 



In Europe the Great Auk was rarely met along 

 the coasts of Norway and Sweden, but as is 

 evidenced by the finding of its bones in shell-heaps, 

 it frequented the fjords of Denmark in prehistoric 

 times. Its remains have also been found in shell- 

 heaps in the Orkneys, in Caithness, and on Oron- 

 say island (Argyleshire), Scotland; in old sea 

 caves in Durham, England, and in Donegal, An- 

 trim, Waterford and Clare, Ireland. ^-' 



In America the remains of this bird have been 

 found in shell-heaps along the North Atlantic coast. 

 No evidence has been found of its presence m 

 Nova Scotia, unless some bones found in the shell- 

 heap at the head of St. Margaret's bay, and de- 

 scribed as "evidently belonging to a bird much 

 larger than the Great Northern Diver (Colymhus 

 glacialis)^ '• were those of the Auk. Baird found 

 Great Auk bones in the shell-heaps of New Bruns- 

 wick.'^ In Maine the bones occurred in sufficient 

 numbers to justify the belief that the bird was 

 formerly very common. It was represented among 

 the animal remains found by Wyman in the shell- 

 heaps at Mount Desert and Crouchs cove,*' and 

 the shell-heaps explored by Baird, especially those 

 on some islands in Casco bay."' More recently, 

 Loomis and Young found its bones the most abun- 

 dant of the bird remains in one of the shell-heaps 

 on Flagg island, Maine. ^' In Massachusetts its 

 remains occurred in considerable numbers at Eagle 

 Hill, in Ipswich.''' Wyman found its bones in a 



4 1 Lucas, Frederick A.: Animals Recently Ex- 

 tinct or '■|"'l)reatpned with Extermination ,etc., Report 

 of the U.S. National Museum, 1889, p. 639. 



•c'Sliarpe, K. }>,., A Hand-book of the Birds of 

 Groat Britain (London, 1897), Vol IV, pp. 112-113; 

 .Saunders, H.. .An Illustrated Manual of British 

 Birds (London, 1899), p. 698: and Hartert. E., Jour- 

 dain, F. C. R., Ticehurst, N. P., and Witherby, H. 

 F., A Hand-list of British Birds, etc. (London, 

 1912), p. 206. 



4:i,Jones, ,T. M., in Smithsonian Report for 1863, 

 p. 371. 



•»40p. cit., ]). 297. 



4">Wyman, op. cit., ]). 'u-i. 

 . ■*>■•()]). c-it., It. 296. 



■»T()p. cit.. I). 29. 



i><Baird, op. cit,. p. 297. 



