TUKKEY HUNTING. 15 



and saw the pawpaw bear its luscious fruit ; shady glens 

 and pools of water invited to repose, and in fancy's eye 

 his lazy harem lay beneath those trees, shuffling with 

 their wings the clear white sand of the hummocks that 

 bounded the sea. All this he saw, and then swelling his 

 throat, he sent forth his clear alarm, herald of the morn, 

 and gathering cry of his clan. 



I understood his feeling, and yet raising my rifle I 

 took aim at him (strange contrariety of man) and fired. 

 A half-uttered gobble was suppressed, and spreading his 

 wings he sailed away in a slanting direction. " Missed," 

 I ejaculated, as I saw him skating along like a hawk. 

 Just then, without an indication, he rolled over in the 

 air and came crashing through the boughs of the pine 

 trees to the earth. 



I ran to my prize. His heavy beard and long spurs 

 showed him to be an old gobbler, probably one of those 

 lonely birds that, expatriating themselves from their 

 flocks, wander about in self-doomed celibacy. Throwing 

 my game over my shoulders, I returned to camjD and to 

 breakfast, well contented with my success. 



If the reader is desirous of knowing what is a wild 

 turkey, by turning to Audubon's, Wilson's, or Bona- 

 parte's Ornithology, he will discover it to be of the 

 gallinaceous order, with conical papilla on the forehead, 

 neck corrugated, beset with cavernous caruncles, frontal 

 caruncle blue and red, and with scutellate toes, scabrous 

 above and papillas beneath, etc. After pondering on 

 Ihis description he may suspect that his ideas on tho 



