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
"diamond-backs." 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 umbellus_), so abundant in New Jers