Page:Bird-lore Vol 05.djvu/190



An Island Eden

EY FRANK M. CHAPMAN

wmr anatomy-m from nature In rm- :mllmr

ORTON wrote of New England birds in 1632, of "cranes there are a great store . . . they sometimes eate our come and doe pay for their presumption well enough i . . a goodly bird in a dishe and no discomodityt" Of “swannes,” this early natural historian tells us, "there was a great store at the seasons of the yearr” Other water-fowl there were in countless myriads. and among them were Labrador Ducks, \Vhite Peli- cans, and, not improbably, Great Auks. Trees fell beneath the weight of roosting Wild Pigeons, which, in ﬂight, darkened the air, and in proper localities Heath Hens, the eastern Prai ’e Chicken, abounded.

It was not a day when close attention was paid to natural science. and we shall never deﬁnitely know the conditions of bird- and mammal-life which existed at the time this country was colonized: but, from records similar to those which llllorton and others have left us, we gather that surprising changes have occurred in the character of our bird-life during the past four hundred years. Not only, as we know too well in our own generation, have many species become greatly reduced in numbers, but others have totally disappeared, or are seen only at long intervals as waifs from some region in which they have not as yet become exterminated.

The present-day ornithologist reads the timevdiscolored pages of these pioneers with the keenest regret that the scenes they describe can never be observed again. Imagine, then, the writer‘s exultation on discovering that within one hundred miles of our most populous city there is still a, considerable area where, if there is not a "greate store of Cranes," *1 the ex- isting conditions are so unlike those commonly prevailing throughout the surrounding region that the observer may easily fancy himself transported to the early part of the last century. So marked is the change that he

‘Mnuon wrote 0! a mu Crane or lhl‘ zenus Gm; not I)! our meal Blue Heron (Ania: hrvmlmrl, to which lhr name 'Cnnt' is nlltn «uplicd.