Now a genetic study of the skins of scores of heath hens, all of them from the Vineyard, shows that the Island bird, although it looked and behaved much like its supposed parent species in the Midwest, was a wholly distinctive creature. Genetically it was more different from the greater western prairie chicken - that supposed parent species - than the Midwestern bird is from any other family member in its genus, which includes the lesser prairie chicken, the endangered Attwater's prairie chicken of eastern Texas, and even the sharp-tailed grouse. It is possible that instead of being a subspecies of the prairie chicken - which scientists have considered it to be since it was first typed in the last years of the nineteenth century - the heath hen might have been a species unto itself.

The shed behind the Tisbury Marketplace was built to house the construction of Rebecca back in 1997. The shed was just big enough to accommodate the schooner as her builders laid the keel, sawed out the frames and installed the bowsprit and boomkin that would help fasten her spars and rigging to hull and deck.

The first time I saw Camp Jabberwocky to know what it was, it looked just like what you will see sometime after five o'clock this afternoon, probab

Barbara (Bobbie) Nevin Dies at Age 79; She Was Realtor and Towering Island Figure

By NICOLE GALLAND and TOM DUNLOP

Flags all across Edgartown - at Memorial Wharf, the county courthouse, Memorial Park and the American Legion Post 186 - flew at half-staff this week to mourn Barbara B. Nevin, a leading citizen of the town, who died unexpectedly on Friday at Cape Cod Hospital in Hyannis. Mrs. Nevin was 79 and the widow of Dr. Robert W. Nevin.

TORONTO, ONTARIO - It all began in the summer of 1993 when Sean Costello, a short man with red hair and Down syndrome, wandered onto a playing fiel

With cannons firing from three wharves around the harbor, a Navy warbird lacing the sky overhead with trails of white smoke and a piper sending her down to the sea to the tune of Scotland the Brave, the schooner Rebecca was launched from the Tisbury Marine Railway Company late Tuesday afternoon.