these trees were sufficiently abundant to afford an important 
element in the food supply. 
Extermination in New England. 
So gradual was the disappearance of the Turkey in this 
northern corner of its range, that no particular attention 
was paid to the fact that it was losing ground. No one 
knows when the last one was killed in Maine, for though 
Audubon in 1849 (Ornithological Biography, vol. 5, p. 559) 
mentions it as a bird of that State in the 40’s, it is probable 
that he spoke from hearsay only. In New Hampshire it 
apparently survived to about the same period, though for 
this there is little evidence beyond the statement of Dr. 
Samuel Cabot, at a meeting of the Boston Society of Nat¬ 
ural History, held August 17, 1842, “that the Turkey is said 
to be extinct in the northeastern part of the United States, 
but the fact is otherwise. Dr. Cabot purchased one in the 
market, brought from New Hampshire. It is common in 
the western part of New York State” (Cabot, S., Proc. 
Boston Soc. Nat. Hist., 1841-44, vol. 1, p. 80). It must 
have already gone from Vermont for it seems likely that 
Dr. Cabot would have known of it had it still existed there. 
Audubon, it will be recalled, had purchased “a few fine 
males” in the Boston Market in the winter of 1832-83, show¬ 
ing that they were sent there for sale, perhaps from Maine, 
New Hampshire, central Massachusetts or New York. In 
Connecticut they were said to be plentiful in 1780, and 
occasionally seen as late as 1790 (Field, D. D., “A statis¬ 
tical account of the county of Middlesex in Connecticut,” 
1819, p. 19). Timothy Dwight, who, when president of 
Yale, delighted to spend his summers in travels through 
the surrounding country, writes in 1821, that the Wild 
Turkeys are “much larger and much finer than those which 
are tame. They are, however, greatly lessened in their 
numbers, and in the most populous parts of the country are 
not very often seen.” He is evidently speaking here of New 
England in general, and later he says of New Haven, that 
it is built on a plain of which “formerly the surface was 
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