84 Daniel McKinley 



When Benjamin Franklin's printing partner, Hugh Meredith, grew 

 tired of the bonds of city life, he dissolved the partnership (July 1730) and 

 apparently went to live among Welch kinsmen that summer and fall near 

 Cape Fear in Brunswick and New Hanover counties. He spent the winter 

 at the mouth of Black River, South Carolina, "near 100 miles West of 

 Brunswick." His letters to Franklin describing Cape Fear, published in 

 April and May 1731, were presumably written that winter or early spring 

 and, of course, refer to the previous summer. The Cape Fear region, 

 Meredith reported, had no chestnut, but other Pennsylvania trees were 

 present, plus "Cypress, Laurel, Bay red and yellow, Live Oak and Swamp 

 Oak, all Evergreen except Cypress; with several Sorts whose Names I 

 know not. Pheasants and Heath-hens here are none, but all other Fowl 

 common with you are. Parraquets in Summer, and greater Plenty of 

 Turkeys than ever I saw in Pennsylvania. Here are Foxes, Wolves, Wild- 

 cats, Possums, Raccoons, and Panthers always, and Bears sometimes in 

 great plenty; also plenty of Deer, but Beavers here are none, nor any 

 Ground-Squirrels, tho' plenty of Gray and Flying Squirrels; Alligators are 

 very numerous here but not very mischievous; however, on their Account 

 Swimming is less practis'd here than in the Northern Provinces" (1922:26- 

 27). It is unfortunately not clear whether Meredith meant to say that 

 parakeets were absent in winter. If we infer this, it must be realized that it 

 would have been hearsay information in his case. 



John Brickell, who practiced medicine in Edenton for many years, took 

 part of his material straight from Lawson and added bits of his own. 

 Whether to trust him at all is a question at times. For example, he ob- 

 served in 1737, in regard to what he called "Black small-Crows" (by 

 which he apparently meant blackbirds of some sort that were enemies of 

 corn), that they "Build their Nest in hollow Trees as the Parakeetoes do" 

 (1911:179, 181). This is something that our native blackbirds do not do 

 and which is largely a matter of popular conviction with the parakeet, for 

 nobody ever got around to observing it conclusively. (A source of ad- 

 ditional Brickell claims is the Virginia traveler, the Rev. John Clayton, as 

 shown by Simpson and Simpson [1977], although Clayton contributed 

 nothing on the parakeet. The Simpsons reproduce [page 4] a plate that 

 appeared in the 1737 edition of Brickell where a "Parekeetoe" is among 

 the fairly recognizable denizens of Carolina.) 



Aside from William Bartram's rather circumstantial contribution of 

 1791, the story of the parakeet in North Carolina very nearly ends with 

 Lawson and Brickell. When Bartram wrote that the "parrot of Carolina, 

 or Parrakeet" was among "natives of Carolina and Florida, where they 

 breed and continue the year round," North Carolina, although not ex- 

 pressly said, was probably meant. He had spent a good deal of the time 



