PINNATED GROUSE 2iI 
that living western grouse of any kind were intro- 
duced into Massachusetts at so early a period.” 
From the evidence given by Mr. Brewster and other 
writers it may be assumed that the heath hen was 
more or less abundant on the site of Boston at the time 
that city was founded, and there is no reason why it 
should not have been numerous in other favorable sit- 
uations along the New England coast and to the south- 
ward. Early writings tell us that it was so. It 
was found along the seaboard south of New Jersey, 
and the late C. S. Wescott, of Philadelphia, frequently 
spoke of it as having occurred—according to tradition 
—in Maryland and Delaware, on the shores of the 
Chesapeake Bay and on the Peninsula of Maryland and 
Virginia. 
Nuttall, as late as 1832, says of the heath hen: 
“Along the Atlantic coast they are still met with on 
the grouse plains of New Jersey, on the brushy 
plains of Long Island, in similar shrubby barrens in 
Westford, Conn., in the islands of Martha’s Vineyard 
on the south side of Massachusetts Bay, and formerly, 
as probably in many other tracts, according to the 
information 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 a week!” 
Linsley, in his list of Connecticut birds, eleven years 
