Carolina Parakeet in Carolinas 87 



nated; many scientists of his day agreed with him. The year 1682, one 

 judges, was a good one for wild turkeys, and the frontier mentality has fer- 

 vently abided by forty-pound turkeys ever since. 



Samuel Wilson, who was probably never in the colonies, seconded the 

 sterling hopes of economic opportunities promoted by T. A., Gent, (and 

 may even have purloined his bird list from that, or a common, source). 

 Putting a Pounds-Shillings-Pence sign on everything that he could, he 

 listed trees, other plants, fruits, mammals and birds found in the Charles- 

 ton area : "Here are also in the woods great plenty of wilde Turkeys, Par- 

 tridges, something smaller than those of England, but more de[l]icate, 

 Turtle Doves, Paraquetos, and Pidgeons: On the grass planes the whis- 

 tling Plover and Cranes and divers sorts of Birds unknowne in England." 

 He also listed a number of waterfowl (1682; Salley 1911:170-171). 



John Lawson, as I have already noted, did not mention parakeets in his 

 long trip inland from Charleston in the winter of 1700-1701, suggestive 

 negative evidence that the "Carolina" part of the bird's name was never 

 more than a formality. It remained for his near-contemporary, visiting 

 naturalist Mark Catesby, to put South Carolina's claim to the parakeet 

 firmly on record (1731 :1 1) and, incidentally, to bring it to attention of the 

 scientific world. The latter event came to official fruition through the rest- 

 less genius of the great Karl von Linne, known to the Latin-mongering 

 elite of that time as Carolus Linnaeus. Linnaeus merely cited the species' 

 homeland as "Carolina" and duly provided it with an enduring specific 

 scientific name that says, in Latin, the same thing (1758:97). He said very 

 little more, for he had not a specimen but only Catesby 's plate and ac- 

 count from which to elaborate upon his legitimate binominal for the 

 species. That Catesby referred to South Carolina only needs to be re- 

 peated; he did not mean to include North Carolina (Wayne 1917:3; con- 

 sult also Catesby's places of residence in America: Frick and Stearns 

 1961). As to the status of the species, Catesby was sketchy and it is not 

 clear whether he meant to imply that the species left Carolina twice a year, 

 in winter and again, as the French naturalist Buffon put it, "in the love 

 season," to reappear later in the season of harvest (Buffon 1792-1793:235- 

 237). (Buffon was often misled by what he called the voice of reason — ac- 

 tually, his own preconceptions — and not only had no qualms about de- 

 moting New World forms to poor relations of Old World species, but also 

 held firmly to his decision that parrots only bred in the tropics: hence, 

 the Carolina parrot by simple calculation was but a migrant out of the 

 French tropical colony of Guiana.) 



Thomas Pennant, who, like Buffon, had not been in Carolina, wrote at 

 first that "a few are found as far north as Carolina." He later amended that 

 view to include Virginia, but considered it mainly a migratory bird even in 



