l8o MEMOIRS OF THE NUTTALL ORNITHOLOGICAL CLUB. 



The following lines occur in an attractive little poem on " Sweet Auburn " 

 written by Miss Caroline Frances Orne and published in 1 844 : 



" While tlie quail whistled in its plaintive tone, 

 And cooing stock-doves made their gentle moan. " 1 



As we gather from this poem and its preface, Miss Orne was accustomed 

 in early youth to spending long spring and summer days in the then extensive 

 and primitive woods of what is now Mount Auburn Cemetery. It also appears 

 that she had intimate and, in the main, accurate, knowledge of the common and 

 more conspicuous birds which she met with during her walks. Her expression 

 ' gentle moan ' so aptly characterizes the cooing of the Carolina Dove as to sug- 

 gest that this must have been the species to which she alludes. If such an 

 assumption be granted and if, as may be further inferred, her ' stock-doves ' were 

 frequently heard cooing in summer, we may reasonably conclude that the Caro- 

 lina Dove bred in or near Sweet Auburn in those early days. Nuttall does not 

 mention finding it there, but Lowell says : " A rarer visitant [to Elmwood than 

 the Quail] is the turtle-dove, whose pleasant coo I have sometimes heard, and 

 whom I once had the good luck to see close by me in the mulberry-tree."^ 

 Elmwood, of course, lies very near Mount Auburn, and Lowell's passage, although 

 published in 1868, may well have related to experiences which had happened 

 during the earlier years of his life and perhaps at the very time to which Miss 

 Orne refers. 



Among the birds of Massachusetts which "yeeld us much profit, and honeft 

 pleafure," Wood included, in 1634, 



" The harmonious Thrufh, fwift Pigeon, Turtle-dove, 

 Who to her mate doth ever con/tant proove."^ 



His '■fwift Pigeon ' was, of course, the Wild Pigeon {Ectopistes migratorius), 

 and since he evidently distinguished it from his ' Turtle-dove ' the latter must 

 almost of necessity have been the Carolina Dove which, as we may further 

 assume with some degree of probability, he is most likely to have noted during 

 his residence at Saugus (now Lynn), and hence within a few miles of the eastern 

 boundary of the Cambridge Region. 



IC. F. Orne, Sweet Auburn and Mount Auburn, with other Poems, 1844, 6. 



^ J. R. Lowell, My Garden Acquaintance, Atlantic Almanac for 1869, i868, 37. 



' William Wood, New Englands Prospect, ed. 2, 1635, 23. Charles Deane's ed., 1865, 29, 30. 



