142 The Journal of Heredity 
by the right sort of laws, I am of the 
opinion that the birds will increase 
rapidly, despite the encroachment of 
civilization and the war waged upon 
them by sportsmen. It is not the legiti- 
mate methods of destruction that deci- 
mate the turkey ranks, as is the case 
with the quail and grouse, but it is the 
nefarious tricks the laws in many states 
permit, namely, trapping and baiting. 
The latter is by far the most destruc- 
tive, and is practiced by those who 
kill turkeys for the market, and fre- 
quently by those who want to slaugh- 
ter these birds solely for count. No 
creature, however prolific, can stand 
such treatmentlong. The quail, though 
shot in great numbers by both sports- 
men and market hunters, and annually 
destroyed legitimately by the thousands, 
stand it better than the wild turkey, 
although the latter produces and raises 
almost as many young at a time as the 
quail. 
“There are two reasons for this: One 
is, the quail are not baited and shot on 
the ground; the other reason is that 
every bobwhite in the spring can, and 
does, use his call, thus bringing to him a 
mate; but the turkey, if he dares to 
gobble, no matter if he is the only 
turkey in a radius of 40 miles, has every 
one who hears him and can procure a 
gun, after him, and they pursue him 
relentlessly until he is killed. Among 
the turkeys the hens raised are greatly 
in excess of the gobblers. This fact 
seems to have been provided for by 
nature in making the male turkey 
polygamous; but as the male turkey is, 
during the spring, a very noisy bird, 
continually gobbling and strutting to 
attract his harem, and as he is much 
larger and more conspicuous than the 
hens, it is only natural that he is in more 
danger of being killed. Suppose the 
proportion of gobblers in the beginning 
of spring is three to fifteen hens in a 
certain stretch of woods. As soon as 
the mating season begins, these gobblers 
will make their whereabouts known by 
their noise; result—the gunners are 
after them at once, and the chances are 
ten to one they will all be killed. The 
hens will then have no mate, and no 
young will be produced; whereas, if 
but one gobbler were left, each of our 
supposed fifteen hens would raise an 
average of ten young each, and we 
would also have 150 new turkeys in the 
fall to yield sport and food. It has 
always been my practice to leave at 
least one old gobbler in each locality 
to assist the hens in reproduction. If 
every hunter would do this the problem 
of maintaining the turkey supply would 
be greatly solved.” 
The Age of Parenthood 
There is a widespread idea that people 
formerly married very early in life, 
and now marry very late. Census 
figures have demonstrated that as far as 
concerns the United States, during the 
past half century, young people are 
marrying today at an earlier average 
age than formerly. Genealogical data 
compiled by Charles Nutt of Worcester, 
Mass., indicate that five or six genera- 
tions ago marriage took place at about 
the same time as nowadays. In the 
Colonial period, he finds that the aver- 
age age of parents at the time their 
children were born is about 31 years. 
This is an indirect way of getting at 
the facts, but it tallies with the investi- 
gation of C. L. Redfield, who found that 
the average age of fathers was 32 and of 
mothers 29, in a large number of New 
ingland families. As families were 
larger formerly than now, it is evident 
that parallels between the ages of 
parents then and now must be drawn 
with care, if based on such averages as 
those here given. 
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