44 GEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF ALABAMA 



sought the top of the tallest tree. The other hens did 

 not rear any young. One of them, the following year, 

 laid and hatched a dozen eggs. This time a white boy, 

 the son of a Baptist preacher, who drove his father's 

 cow to pasture every day in a field near my house, took 

 a dozen little turkeys from the mother. The next day he 

 brought his gun with him and shot the old hen. I hap- 

 pened to be in town when this Nimrod marched down the 

 street with my turkey swinging on his back. I was 

 standing across the street, and I heard some one say: 

 ''You got her, eh?"I walked across the street and, full of 

 ire, I took my beautiful turkey from the rascal. He did 

 not say a word; he was guilty and made no attempt to 

 defend himself. I found my little turkeys at his rever- 

 end sire's but the poor little birds had been starved twen- 

 ty-four hours, and they all died in spite of my effort to 

 raise them. 



"I shall mention one habit of these turkeys, and then I 

 shall close this perhaps already too long communication. 

 Whenever they were threatened by danger, even when a 

 mile from the house, they rose with their loud cry of 

 alarm "put! put! put!" which they never ceased to utter 

 'till they found themselves safely alighted in the yard. 

 They roosted in a large post oak that had stood for fifty 

 years in the yard, and which may have been a hundred 

 years old. It was ivy-mantled from the ground ; the ivy 

 had covered the stem and most of the branches. There at 

 least these persecuted birds were safe, and there their 

 instinct taught them to fly from danger. 



'"Seeing that I could not keep my turkeys, I gave to a 

 neighbor one of the cocks, a magnificent bird, so gentle 

 that he allowed himself to be taken while feeding from 

 my hand. The rest of the flock I killed myself. 



"Thus went my turkeys; the oak where they roosted 

 is gone; it was blasted by lightning; the hands that 

 planted the ivy and the dear old house itself has vanished 

 from earth, and death and the flames have done their 

 work. 



'Return! sad thoughts! return! 

 I wish to dream and not to weep'." (1886b). 



