THE WILD TURKEY 289 
° 
Merrymount, now Wollaston, only a few miles south 
of the Cambridge region, where he lived from 1625 
to 1628, and again in 1629 and 30, says: ‘Great flocks 
(of turkeys) have fallied by our doores;...I had a 
Salvage who hath taken out his boy in a morning, and 
they have brought home their loades about noone. I 
have asked them what number they found in the woods, 
who have answered, Neent Metawna, which is a tho- 
sand that day.’ Wood confirms this by stating that 
‘sometimes there will be forty, three score, and an hun- 
dred of a flocke, sometimes more and sometimes lesse; 
their feeding is Acornes, Hawes and Berries, some of 
them get a haunt to frequent our English corne: In 
Winter when the Snow covers the ground they resort 
to the Seashore to looke for Shrimps and such small 
Fishes at low tides. Such as love Turkie hunting must 
follow it in Winter after a new falne Snow, when he 
may follow them by their tracts; some have killed ten 
or a dozen in halfe a day; if they can be found towards 
an evening and watched where they peirch, if one come 
about ten or eleaven of the clocke he may shoote as 
often as he will, they will sit unlesse they be slenderly 
wounded. These Turkie remaine al the yeare long, the 
price of a good Turkie cocke is foure shillings; and he 
is well worth it for he may be in weight 40 pound; a 
Hen two shillings.’ Josslyn mentions seeing, probably 
at Black Point (now Scarborough), Maine, ‘threescore 
broods of young Turkies on the side of a Marsh, sun- 
ning of themselves in a morning betimes, but this was 
thirty years since [in 1638 or 1639], the English and 
