His Own Name
He Made Not Publick Until After This Date, After Ye
Revolution In England, (In Ye Year Of Our Lord
1688,) When He Let His Name Be Seen In Publick
Papers, And Had Ye Lands Patented In His Own
Name."
The writer of the above quotation was the
great-grandson of Edward Whalley (alias Edward
Middleton), the celebrated regicide.
Four miles from South Point I struck the
marshes which skirted Dr. Purnell's large
plantation, and pushing the canoe up a narrow branch
of the creek, I waded through the partially
submerged herbage to the firm ground, where the
doctor was awaiting me. His house was close
at hand, within the hospitable walls of which I
passed the night. Dr. Purnell has an estate of
one thousand five hundred acres, lying along the
banks of Newport Creek. Since the civil war it
has been worked by tenants. Much of it is
woodland and salt-marshes. Five years before
my visit, a Philadelphian sent the doctor a few
pairs of prairie-chickens, and a covey of both the
valley and the mountain partridge. I am now
using popular terms. The grouse were from a
western state; the partridges had been obtained
from California. The partridges were kept caged
for several weeks and were then set at liberty.
They soon disappeared in the woods, with the
exception of a single pair, which returned daily
to the kitchen-door of a farm tenant to obtain
food. These two birds nested in the garden
close to the house, and reared a fine brood of
young; but the whole covey wandered away, and
were afterwards heard from but once. They
had crossed to the opposite side of Newport
Creek, and were probably shot by gunners.
The prairie-chickens adapted themselves to
their new home in a satisfactory manner, and
became very tame. Their nests, well filled with
eggs, were found along the rail-fences of the fields
in the close vicinity of the marshes, for which
level tracts they seemed to have strong
attachment. They multiplied rapidly, and visited the
cattle-pens and barn-yards of the plantation.
The Maryland legislature passed a law to
protect all grouse introduced into the state; but a
new danger threatened these unfortunate birds.
A crew of New Jersey terrapin-hunters entered
Chincoteague Inlet, and searched the ditches and
little creeks of the salt-marshes for the
"diamondbacks." While thus engaged, the gentle grouse,
feeding quietly in the vicinity, attracted their
attention, and they at once bagged most of them.
A tenant on the estate informed me that he had
seen eighteen birds in a cornfield a few days
before - the remnant of the stock.
The Ruffled Grouse (Bonasa umbellas), so
abundant in New Jersey, is not a resident of the
peninsula. Dr. Purnell's first experiment with
the Pinnated Grouse (Cupidonia cupido) has
encouraged others to bring the ruffled grouse to
the eastern shore of Maryland. That
unapproachable songster of the south, the American
Mocking-bird (Mimus polyglottus), is becoming
scarce in this region, from the inroads made by
bird-catchers who ship the young to northern
cities.
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