404 GAME BIRDS, WILD-FOWL AND SHORE BIRDS. 



Undoubtedly during this period the Great Auk was plenti- 

 ful about Newfoundland and off the shores of New England. 

 Professor Lucas, who reported at some length the history of this 

 bird, and procured quantities of its remains in 1887, says that 

 millions must have died on Funk Island.^ When they were 

 plentiful there, some of these millions must have passed along 

 our coast. 



Steenstrup believes that this Auk probably occurred at 

 Cape Cod.^ 



It is perhaps a little more than seventy miles from Port- 

 land, where Josselyn probably saw the Great Auk, to Ipswich 

 Bay; and there Prof. F. W. Putnam states that great numbers 

 of the bones of the Great Auk have been found in the shell- 

 heaps of Ipswich and Plum Island, Mass. They were found 

 also at Marblehead.' 



Miss Hardy points out that these shell-heaps were made 

 by the aborigines in spring and summer.^ 



Josselyn speaks of the "Wobble" among the birds of New 

 England as an ill-shaped fowl, having no feathers in its 

 pinions, and unable to fly. He says that in spring they are 

 very fat or oily, and tells of his experience in roasting them 

 at that time. Audubon states that an old gunner residing at 

 Chelsea Beach (Revere) told him that he well remembered 

 the time when the Penguins were plentiful about Nahant and 

 some islands in the bay. This must have been some time after 

 1750. 



J. Freeman, in a topographical description of the town of 

 Truro on Cape Cod (1794), gives the " Penguin " as one of 

 the sea-fowl that were then "plenty on the shores and in the 

 bay." 5 



Grieve marks Cape Cod on his map as one of its breeding 

 places. 



In a rather careful search through Massachusetts historical 

 papers, I have found thus far but one other reference which 

 points toward the breeding of this bird in Massachusetts in 



1 Lucas, F. A.: Report National Museum, Washington, 1888, pp. 493-529. 



2 Videnskabelige Middelelser, 1S55, Nos. 3-7, p. 96. 



» Putnam, F. W.: Amer. Nat., 1869, Vol. Ill, p. 540. 

 ' Hardy, Fanny P.: Auk, 1888, pp. 380-384. 

 » Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc, Vol. Ill, 1st ser., p. 199. 



