34 Journal of the Mitchell Society [ June 
man’s destructive influences have written their story large among 
the bird life of that interesting region, and the most northerly 
breeding colony of herons known to exist in the State is situated 
on an island in Matamusket Lake 45 miles away in a southwes- 
terly direction. The birds here are so few in number, and their 
united cries would not equal the lusty shout of a corporal’s guard. 
Two years after this, viz. : in 1586, Thomas Hariot came to the 
island and made a list of the birds he found there. Of these he 
says there were “Turkey cocks and turkey hens, stock doves, par- 
tridges, cranes and herons, and in winter great store of swan and 
geese. Of all sorts of fowl, I have names in the country language, 
four score and six; of which number, besides those that he named, 
we have taken, eaten, and have the pictures as they were drawn, 
with names of the inhabitants; of several strange sorts of water 
fowl eight, and seventeen kinds more of land fowl, although we 
have seen and eaten many more which for want of leisure there 
for the purpose, could not be pictured; and after we are better 
furnished and stored upon further discovery with their strange 
beasts, fish, trees, plants and herbs, they shall be published. 
There are also parrots, falcons, and merlin -hawks, which although 
with us they be not used for meat, yet for other causes I thought 
good to mention.” 
One of the most interesting items in this narration is the refer- 
ence to “parrots”, which establishes the fact without doubt that 
the Carolina Paroquet at one time inhabited the immediate neigh- 
borhood of the coast. / 
John Lawson, Gentleman, in his History of North Carolina 
published in London in 1714, devotes fully ten pages to an enum- 
eration of the birds of the state and a dissertation on the habits 
and activities of some of them. Many of the birds which he found 
here were new to him, and as he evidently was not a trained 
ornithologist he failed in many instances to note the difference 
between them and those species of Europe which to his eye they 
much resembled. To many of our native birds therefore he gave the 
names of English species, and his descriptions being meagre we are 
often left in doubt as to what birds he really had in mind. Thus 
what he calls “Moorehen” may have been either the Gallinule or 
