covered with shrub-oaks; and wild turkeys and partridges 
were found in great numbers” (Dwight, Timothy, “Travels 
in New England and New York,” 1821, vol. 1, pp. 55, 183). 
The last Wild Turkey in Connecticut, however, was prob¬ 
ably killed some years before; at all events, Linsley, whose 
knowledge of local natural history was exceptional, wrote 
in 1843, “The last wild Turkey that I have known in Con¬ 
necticut was taken by a relation of mine about thirty years 
since (i. e., about 1813) on Totoket Mountain, in North- 
ford. It was overtaken in a deep snow, and thereby outrun. 
It weighed, when dressed, twenty-one pounds” (Linsley, 
J. H., Amer. Jour. Sci. and Arts, 1843, vol. 44, p. 264). 
Massachusetts was the last stronghold of the Wild Tur¬ 
key in New England. In the eastern part of the State the 
latest record seems to be that given by William Brewster 
(Mem. Nuttall Orn. Club, 1906, No. 4, p. 175) of an old cock 
that frequented the Concord region, somewhere about 1808 
to 1815. So wary was this bird that none of the ‘‘gunners 
of that day ever succeeded in getting a fair shot at it.” It 
was in the country along the Connecticut Valley in western 
Massachusetts that the Wild Turkey longest survived in 
New England. In Franklin County, at the north end of 
the valley in this state, Brewer recorded that “specimens 
of the Wild Turkeys have been taken ... as late as 
1842, but railroads have since completed their extinction” 
(Brewer, T. M., Bull. Nuttall Orn. Club, 1878, vol. 3, p. 
139). It is probably on the authority of the same author 
that the statement is made in Baird, Brewer and Ridgway’s 
“History of North American Birds” (Land Birds, 1874, 
vol. 3, p. 405) that “within a few years individuals have 
been shot in Montague, Mass., and in other towns in Frank¬ 
lin County.” In the town of Whately, in the southern part 
of the county, Temple (History of the Town of Whately, 
Mass., 1872, p. 54) records that “Wild Turkeys were not 
uncommon in 1795.” It is likely, however, that the date 
1842 marks nearly the time when the last Turkey was killed 
in Franklin County. Later dates refer probably to Hamp¬ 
shire County, next to the south. Here, in the wilder parts 
14 
