the Fort two hundred in one herd have been usually
observed." They were destroyed ruthlessly by a system of fire-hunting,
in which tracts of forests were burned over, by starting a continuous
circle of fire miles around, which burnt in toward the centre of the
circle; thus the deer were driven into the middle, and hundreds were
killed. This miserable, wholesale slaughter was not for venison, but for
the sake of the hides, which were very valuable. They were used to make
the durable and suitable buckskin breeches and jackets so much worn by
the settlers; and they were also exported to Europe in large numbers. A
tax was placed on hides for the support of the beloved William and Mary
College.

In Georgia, in 1735, the Indians sold a deer for sixpence. Deer were
just as abundant in the more Northern colonies. At Albany a stag was
sold readily by the Indians for a jack-knife or a few iron nails. The
deer in winter came and fed from the hog-pens of Albany swine. Even in
1695, a quarter of venison could be bought in New York City for
ninepence. At the first Massachusetts Thanksgiving, in 1621, the Indians
brought in five deer to the colonists for their feast. That year there
was also "great store of wild turkies." These beautiful birds of gold
and purple bronze were at first plentiful everywhere, and were of great
weight, far larger than our domestic turkeys to-day. They came in flocks
of a hundred, Evelyn says of three hundred on the Chesapeake, and they
weighed thirty or forty pounds each: Josselyn says he saw one weighing
sixty pounds. William Penn wrote that turkeys weighing thirty pounds
apiece sold in his day and colony for a shilling only. They were shy
creatures and fled inland from the white man, and by 1690 were rarely
shot near the coast of New England, though in Georgia, in 1733, they
were plentiful enough and cheap enough to sell for fourpence apiece.
Flights of pigeons darkened the sky, and broke down the limbs of trees
on which they lighted. From Maine to Virginia these vast flocks were
seen. Some years pigeons were so plentiful that they were sold for a
penny a dozen in Boston. Pheasant, partridge, woodcock, and quail
abounded, plover, snipe, and curlew were in the marsh-woods; in fact, in
Virginia every bird familiar to Englishmen at home was found save
peacock and domestic fowl.

Wild hare and squirrels were so many that they became pests, and so much
grain was eaten by them that bounties were paid in many t