TURKEY-SLAUGHTER. 49 



which was surrounded by a hedge of carob- trees, a re- 

 peated cluck, cluck, which attracted my attention. I 

 advanced with light footsteps, and speedily descried, 

 perched on a leafless bough, a noble turkey, who cackled 

 with amazing volubility. The bird was about fifteen paces 

 distant ; I was on the point of firing at him, when, on my 

 left, successive cluck, clucks warned me that several males 

 were replying to the summons of the female. In fact, 1 

 soon distinguished among the high grass a score of tin-keys 

 advancing towards me. Their eyes blazed with an un- 

 known fire, their gait was precipitate, and their amorous 

 duckings reminded one of a cat miauling in the gutters. 

 As soon as they were within fifteen paces I fired among the 

 flock, and had the pleasure of bringing down six enormous 

 birds, of whom some were dead, and others too severely 

 wounded to fly. Will the reader believe me when I say 

 that the remainder of the birds would not abandon those 

 who had fallen to my double-barrel, and that I was able 

 to hit four of them in succession without quitting the spot 

 where my six victims lay? 



One of my friends, who had travelled on horseback in 

 the interior of Arkansas, told me that, having killed with 

 a pistol-shot a superb turkey whom he found squatting 

 on the earth, he went to pick her up, and, to his astonish- 

 ment, discovered that she had been sitting on a nest con- 

 taining fourteen little ones, evidently hatched within the 

 last four and twenty hours. The poor mother, spite of 

 the imminence of the danger, had scorned to abandon her 

 progeny. 



An United States farmer complained, and with justice, 



