BIRDS OF THE CAMBRIDGE REGION. 



173 



were, without much douljt, Ruffed Grouse, and his 'quailes,' unquestionably Bob-whites which, 

 as he asserts, occasionally "take trees alfo." 



Nuttall, writing of the Heath Hen in 1832, says : "Along the Atlantic coast, they are still 

 met with on the Grous plains of New Jersey, on the brushy plains of Long Island, in similar 

 shrubby barrens in Westford, Connecticut, in the island of Martha's Vinyard on the south side 

 of Massachusetts Bay; and formerly, as probably in many other tracts, according to the infor- 

 mation 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 the week ! "i 

 The final statement in the above passage has a familiar sound, for with the substitution of ' sal- 

 mon' or 'shad' for 'Heath-Hen' it appears in the early annals of several New England towns. 

 If ' laboring people ' and ' servants ' were really ever surfeited with the flesh of Heath Hens 

 killed on the hills now occupied by the city of Boston, the birds must have also visited the 

 Cambridge shores of the Back Bay. 



I have been permitted to quote the following interesting passage from ' Notes of conversa- 

 tions with Eliza Cabot written down by her son, J. E. C[abot],' and printed for private circula- 

 tion in 1904: "I recollect the Western prairie grouse in this part of the country. I saw one 

 once in Newton ; and once, after I was married, your father went down to the Cape, fishing, and 

 in the woods there I saw a grouse very near me, and saw him puff up that orange they have on 

 the side of the neck."^ Eliza Cabot was born on April 17, 1791, and married about 1811. Her 

 granddaughter, Mrs. Charles Almy, thinks it probable that she saw the Grouse in Newton about 

 the beginning of the nineteenth century, and the one on ' the Cape ' (Cape Cod, no doubt) about 

 1812. That both birds were Heath Hens can scarcely be doubted, for there is no evidence that 

 living western Grouse of any kind were introduced into Massachusetts at so early a period. 



From the evidence above cited we may assume with reasonable safety that the Heath Hen 

 was found rather numerously on the "ancient bushy site " of Boston, at the time that city was 

 founded, while there are also reasons for believing that it frequented many other localities, 

 more or less similar in character, along the neighboring coast, probably ranging as far north- 

 ward as Cape Ann. Apparently it was exterminated nearly everywhere by the English colo- 

 nists not long after this coast region became generally settled, and perhaps before 1650. Mrs. 

 Cabot's testimony indicates, however, that it had not wholly disappeared from Cape Cod, nor 

 even from the immediate neighborhood of Boston, at the beginning of the past century. On 

 the island of Martha's Vineyard it has continued to exist in limited and varying numbers down 

 to the present day.] 



[Phasianus torquatus Gmel. Ring-necked Pheasant. ' Mongolian Pheasant.' This 

 fine bird, the Ring-necked Pheasant, has apparently become permanently established in the 

 Cambridge Region — as well as in many other parts of Massachusetts — during the past eight 

 or ten years. Although not as yet very numerously represented in our immediate neighbor- 

 hood, it appears to be already rather generally distributed there, especially in portions of 

 Cambridge, Arlington, Belmont and Watertown. It is perhaps seen oftenest and in the great- 

 est numbers in the region lying immediately to the north and west of Fresh Pond. Here as else- 



1 T. Nuttall, Manual of the Ornithology of the United States and of Canada. The Land Birds, 

 1832, 662. 



2 [J. E. Cabot,] J. Elliot Cabot [Autobiographical sketch — ■ Family reminiscences — Sedge birds], 

 1904, 94. 



