414 



Though once very plentiful in the southern and western counties of Ontario, 

 even up to within a few years ago, it is now becoming very rare and is found 

 probably only in the counties of Essex and Kent and even there it is only a 

 matter of a short time when it must become extinct. 



The habits of this bird are so well known in the domestic fowl, whose habits 

 are similar, that it is unnecessary to describe their love-making which usually 

 begins early in February, but the hen does not begin to lay for perhaps a month 

 later, when she makes her nest on the ground beside a log or in some thicket, and 

 deposits usually from ten to fifteen eggs almost exactly like those of the tame 

 bird. 



The food of the turkey is corn and other grain, grass and other plants, seeds 

 fruits, beetles, small lizards, tadpoles, etc. In the south it prefers to all other food 

 pecan nuts and wild grapes, upon which it becomes exceedingly fat. 



It is a very difficult bird to hunt, being wary, running at great speed, and if 

 come upon suddenly flushing as readily as the grouse or quail and alighting in the 

 highest trees after a long flight. They are generally taken by stratagem. One 

 of the most common methods of trapping wild turkeys is by means of a trap 

 made by laying up a square pen of poles or rails gradually narrowing at the top ; 

 under one side of it a trench is dug large enough to admit one turkey, then corn 

 is spread about the woods at some distance and leading up to the pen where a 

 train of grain is laid into it through the opening. The bird readily enters this 

 and once within is so stupid that it constantly flies towards the top or sides in 

 its eiforts to get out, and in fact anywhere except through the opening by which 

 it entered. In this way sometimes a whole flock may be entrapped. 



Below is given the opinion of the late Professor Baird, of the Smithsonian 

 Institute, America's best ornithological authority, as to the origin of the domestic 

 turkey. 



" As with nearly all the animals which have been brought under domestica- 

 tion by man, the true origin of the common barnyard turkey was for a long time 

 a matter of uncertainty. As a well known writer (Martin) observes: "So 

 involved in obscurity is the earl}^ history of the turkey, and so ignorant do the 

 writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries appear to have been about it 

 that they have regarded it as a bird known to the ancients by the name of 

 Meleagris (r.eally the guinea-fowl or pintado) a mistake which was not cleared up 

 till the middle of the eighteenth century. The appellation of " Turkey," which 

 this bird bears in England, arose from the supposition that it came originally 

 from the country of that name, an idea entirely erroneous, as it owes its origin to 

 the New World. Mexico was first discovered by Grigalva in 1518. Oviedo 

 speaks of the turkey as a kind of peacock abounding in New Spain, which had 

 already, in 1526, been transported in a domestic state to the West India Islands 

 .and the Spanish Main, where it was kept by the Christian colonists. 



It is reported to have been introduced into England in 1541. In 1578 it 

 lad become the Christmas fare of the farmer. 



Among the luxuries belonging to the high condition of civilization exhibited 

 "by the Mexican nation at the time of the Spanish conquest, was the possoessin by 

 Montezuma of one of the most extensive zoological gardens on record, numbering 

 nearly all the animals of that country with others brought at much expense from 

 o-reat distances, and it is stated that turkeys were supplied as food in large num- 

 bers daily to the beasts of prey in the menagerie of the Mexican emperor. No 

 idea can be formed at the present day of the date when this bird was first 

 reclaimed in Mexico from its wild condition, although probably it had been known 

 in a domestic state for many centuries. There can, however, be no question of 



