WILD TURKEYS. 



393 



spread of population over the plain, may have in itself 

 sufficed, to render the United States no longer suitable 

 to maintain the wild race, which have therefore gone 

 the way of the Indian and the buffalo. 



Among other wild birds, habitants of the North 

 American woods, that in like manner shun the vicinity 

 of man, according to Frank Forrester, may be enumer- 

 ated the wild turkey, the pinnated and ruffed grouse, 

 and the spruce partridge : all these he says, " unquestion- 

 ably do make their home in the wilderness, the last- 

 named there exclusively." * These latter varieties are 

 habitants mostly of mountainous regions covered with 

 scrub bush forest, near the snow line, or of the dwarf 

 tree-covered tundras of the Sub- Arctic and Arctic Zones. 

 The wild turkey (MeleagrisAmericana)hovtever, may just- 

 ly be regarded as the queen of American game birds. In 

 former days it was very numerous and its geographical 

 range extended over an immense area in North America ; 

 extending in fact from Canada far down into the tropical 

 regions of Central America. This bird was one of the 

 good gifts reaching us from the Western Hemisphere, 

 all our present races of domestic turkeys having been 

 originally imported thence: a fact which is preserved 

 in a corrupted form in the French word "Dindon" the 

 original term for " turkey" in French, being " Poulc 

 D'Inde Don" a "fowl the gift of the Indies," since 

 corrupted into its present shape " Dindon. " f In almost 



* Frank Forrester's American Field Sports, 1852, Vol. i, p. 14 

 (this was the nom-de-plume of Mr. Henry William Herbert, an 

 acute and most painstaking observer of the natural history and wild 

 game of his country). 



f In our own language, the curious name of " turkey " has nothing 

 to do with Turkey or the Turks, but proceeds from its call note, 

 " Turk-Turk-Turk " by which this bird may be said to have named 

 itself. (See Encycl. Brit., gth Edit., Vol. xxiii, p. 657.) 



