THE TURKEY. 307 



with small square pens, in which the turkeys were 

 sitting. They are occasionally taken off the nest 

 for a short time, and then returned to it. 



The most curious part of Reaumur's account, 

 however, is the following. A turkey had de- 

 stroyed a number of eggs committed to her for 

 incubation in a very singular and apparently inex- 

 plicable manner. She had built her nest in a 

 place raised a foot and a half from the ground, 

 between a wall and a dog-kennel, under shelter. 

 As Reaumur never caused eggs to be set upon by 

 turkey-hens for any other purpose than experi- 

 ment, some notes or writing of some sort were 

 almost always written upon the shell. One morn- 

 ing, to his great surprise, he found in the middle 

 of the yard two of the said superscribed eggs, 

 that were of the number of those entrusted to the 

 turkey-hen. It was impossible to comprehend by 

 what means these eggs could have been thus 

 carried to the distance of more than fifteen or six- 



I teen yards from the nest. In reality this was 

 done by the turkey-hen herself. Reaumur was 

 so fortunate as on one occasion to surprise her in 

 the very act of removing an egg: she was holding 



! it in her bill, and she took it and gently laid it 



