more satisfactory. Belknap’s History of New Hampshire, 
published in 1792, contained much information on natural 
history, gathered, as the author’s diary and letters show, 
at much expenditure of time and personal investigation. 
His list of birds of the State is largely nominal, and he 
speaks of the Wild Turkey in only the most general way. 
“Formerly,” he says, ‘‘they were very numerous. In winter 
they frequented the sea shore, for the sake of picking small 
fishes and marine insects, which the tide leaves on the 
flats. . . . They are now retired to the inland mountainous 
country.” (Belknap, J., “History of New Hampshire,” 
1792, vol. 3, p. 170.) Belknap resided in Concord, New 
Hampshire, so his remarks as to the retirement of the 
Turkeys into the interior mountains may mean that at 
Concord they had been exterminated and already, by the 
close of the Revolution, had become so much reduced in 
numbers that but few were left, and these, as contemporary 
records seem to show, clung to the shelter of wooded hills, 
back from the cleared valley country. At Concord, New 
'Hampshire, the former presence of Turkeys is indicated 
by the place-names, Turkey Pond and Turkey River, the 
river flowing from the pond into the Merrimac. This river 
was so named very early in the settlement of Concord, and 
is mentioned in 1732, when the town was still called Rum- 
ford. In Belknap’s time, 1792, the bird must have been 
exterminated from the vicinity. Farther north in the State, 
I have found no evidence of the Turkey, though it may 
have followed the Merrimac valley nearly to the shores of 
Winnipesaukee. But to the southwest they were “frequently 
captured by the early settlers” of Weare, New Hampshire, 
according to William Little’s “History of Weare, N. H.” 
(1888, p. 264). They were said to be “very shy and wary, 
but the Goves (who seem to have done their hunting just 
before the Revolution) got a large number near Weare 
Center; the great rock is shown where Daniel Gove shot 
one, east of Clinton Grove. Hunter Chase fired at one at 
a distance of forty rods, on Cherry Hill, broke its wing and 
chased it down into Hodgdon’s meadow before he secured 
8 
