340 Wright, Early Records of the Wild Turkey. [f^^ 



their weight will be still increased if we add the accounts given us 

 when and how they were gradually dispersed throughout other 

 countries. Had they been brought from Asia or Africa some 

 centuries ago, they must have been long common in Italy, and 

 would have been carried thence over all Europe. We, however, 

 do not find that they were known in that country before the dis- 

 covery of America. It is certain that there were none of them 

 there at the time when Peter Crescentio wrote; that is to say, in 

 the thirteenth century; else he would not have omitted to mention 

 them where he describes the method of rearing all domestic fowls, 

 and even peacocks and partridges. The earliest account of them 

 in Italy is contained in an ordinance issued by the magistrates of 

 Venice, in 1557, for repressing luxury, and in which those tables 

 at which they were allowed are particularised. About the year 

 1570 Bartolomeo Scappi, cook to Pope Pius V, gave in his book on 

 cookery several receipts for dressing these expensive and much 

 esteemed fowls. That they were scarce at this period appears 

 from its being remarked that the first turkeys brought to Bologna 

 were some that had been given as a present to the family of 

 Buonocompagni, from which Gregory XII, who at that time filled 

 the papal chair, was descended. 



" That these fowls were not known in England in the beginning 

 of the sixteenth century, is very probable; as they are not men- 

 tioned in the particular description of a grand entertainment given 

 by the archbishop Nevil; nor in the regulations made by Henry 

 VIII respecting his household, in which all fowls used in the royal 

 kitchen are named. They were, however, introduced into that 

 country about the above period; some say in the year 1524; others, 

 in 1530; and some, in 1532. . . . 



"According to the account of some writers, turkeys must have 

 been known much earlier in France: but in strict examination no 

 proofs of this can be found. The earliest period assigned for their 

 introduction into that country is given by Beguillet, who confi- 

 dently asserts that they were brought to Dijon under the reign of 

 Philip the Bold, about the year 1385 .... De la Mare also is in 

 an error when he relates that the first turkeys in France were those 

 which Jaques Coeur, the well-known treasurer to Charles VII, 

 brought with him from the Levant, and kept on his estate in Gati- 



