TURKEY AND OYSTERS. 225 



favourable opportunity of applying the epithets of dog 

 and pig to casual unbelievers, and express the very 

 lowest opinion of their female relatives, so that in the 

 time of his power his arrogance must have been just 

 unbearable. 



In our farm-yards, where the turkey knows his 

 place, and is subdued unto domesticity, he behaves in 

 a very different manner from the free wild bird in his 

 native woods, who lowers his crested head for none, who 

 rules with undisputed sway over his female train, and 

 has won his way to eminence by successive victories. 

 He is a grand bird and a proud one, as he stalks ma- 

 jestically through the woods followed by his obedient 

 troop, like a patriarch of old with his wives and chil- 

 dren ; ruffles his feathers and spreads his tail in sheer 

 exuberance of pride, and ever and anon gives vent to 

 that extraordinary sound which we call gobbling, and 

 which Arabs have mistaken for a dialect of their own 

 guttural language. 



At the present day the turkey is a potent ally to 

 those far-seeing enquirers who are giving their best 

 endeavours to enrich this country by acclimatising the 

 useful denizens of other lands. There are many most 

 valuable creatures beasts, birds, and fishes which 

 are gradually being 6 improved ' off the face of the 

 earth, and which, unless we grant them a resting-place, 

 will in a few years be as extinct as the mammoth, the 

 dodo, or the iguanodon. 



The progress of civilisation is rapidly producing its 



