13 AMERICAN GAME BIRD SHOOTING. 



according to the old doggerel which is assigned to the pe- 

 riod of Henry VIII: 



" Turkies, carps, hoppes, piccarel and beere, 

 Came into England in one year." 



The poet who wrote these lines was wrong so far as the 

 carp is concerned, for that is mentioned in the Book of 

 St. Albans, but the turkey is not even referred to in the 

 feast given by Archbishop Nevills to Edward IV, nor in 

 the Earl of Northumberland's Household Book, which 

 dates as late as 1512. After the bird was introduced into 

 Great Britain, it must have increased rapidly, as Barring- 

 ton says, that turkey chickens, or powts, formed a por- 

 tion of a Sergeant's feast in 1555; and Tusser, in his 

 ''Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandrie," places 

 them among the Christmas fare of farmers, in 1585; for, 

 in describing a dinner, he says: 



" Beefe, mutton, and porke, shred pies of the best. 

 Pig, veale, goose and capon, and turkie well drest, 

 Cheese, apples, and nuts, jolie carols to heare. 

 As then in the countrie is counted good cheare." 



According to Blumenbach, the bird was introduced 

 into Germany six years after it appeared in England, but 

 the first heard of it in France was at the marriage feast 

 of Charles IX, in 1570. 



The domestic turkey was, for a long time, supposed to 

 be descended from the wild species found in the eastern 

 portion of the United States; but Gould, in a paper read 

 before the London Zoological Society in 1856, proved 

 that its progenitors belonged to the Mexican variety, 

 which differs in some details from its more northern con- 

 gener. The latter may be readily identified by the tips of 

 the tail feathers and the upper tail-coverts, which are of a 

 chestnut-brown color, whereas tliese parts are tipped with 

 white in the former. The Mexican variety is also a lit- 

 tle more brilliant in coloring, and the gloss is more green- 

 ish. When the tail and tail-coverts of a turkey are black. 



