Jkfo^nglanlis Haritieg, 41 



of Hawk, fome fay an Eagle, four times as big as a Gof- 

 hawk, white Mail'd, having two or three purple Feathers 

 in her head as long as Geefes Feathers they make Pens 

 of the Quills of thefe Feathers are purple, as big as 

 Swans Quills and tranfparent; her Head is as big as a 

 Childs of a year old, a very Princely Bird; when fhe 

 foars abroad, all fort of feathered Creatures hide them- 

 felves, yet fhe never preys upon any of them, but upon 

 Fawns and yaccals : She Ayries in the Woods upon the 

 high Hills of OJfapy, and is very rarely or feldome feen. 



The Turkie} 



The Turkie, who is blacker than ours; I have heard 

 feveral credible perfons affirm, they have feen Turkie 



to be sufficient by some writers to show the probable existence of " a bird of prey, 

 very large and bold, on the back of some of our American plantations." But our 

 author's account indicates clearly a crested eagle, which we cannot explain by 

 any thing nearer home than the yzquautli, or crested vulture of Mexico and the 

 countries south of it (Falco Harpyja, Gmel.) ; two notices of which (cited by 

 Linnaeus) had been published some twenty years before Josselyn wrote, and may 

 have been supposed by him to be applicable to a large bird which he had heard 

 of as inhabiting mountains about Ossipee. The great heron — an inhabitant of 

 the coast, and so uncommon inland that " one . . . shot in the upper parts 

 of New Hampshire was described to" Wilson "as a great curiosity" (Amer. 

 Ornith., by Brewer, p. 555) — has the size and the crest of Josselyn's bird; and, 

 if this last was only (as is possible) the name of a confused conception made up 

 from several accounts of large birds, the heron may well be thought to have had 

 a share in it. 



1 " Of these, sometimes there will be forty, threescore and a hundred, of a 

 flock; sometimes more, and sometimes less. Their feeding is acorns, hawes, 

 and berries : some of them get a haunt to frequent English corn. In winter, 

 when the snow covers the ground, they resort to the seashore to look for shrimps, 

 and such small fishes, at low tides. Such as love turkey-hunting must follow it 

 in winter, after a new-fallen snow, when he may follow them by their tracks. 

 Some have killed ten or a dozen in half a day. If they can be found towards an 



