THE DOMESTIC FOWL. 31 



Still, our own Cocks and Hens must have had some proge- 

 nitors, and if I may venture to offer an opinion, it is this; that 

 the wild race, that which once ranged the primaeval woods and 

 jungles, unsubdued by man, is now extinct, forever gone, with 

 the Dodos and the Deinornithes. Such an idea quite agrees 

 with what we now see going on in the world. At no very dis- 

 tantly future time, the Turkey will be in exactly the same 

 position in which I am supposing our Cocks and Hens to be 

 now placed. The race will continue to survive, only from 

 having submitted itself to the dominion of man. Wild Tur- 

 keys are becoming every year more and more scarce in America, 

 and as population increases, and penetrates deeper into the 

 wilds, till the whole face of the country is overspread, occupied, 

 and cultivated, the Turkey in the New World must share 

 the fate of the Bustard in England, and where shall we find 

 it then, except under the same circumstances as we now see 

 our Domestic Fowls? 



. How long existing literature will endure it is impossible to 

 speculate; but should it be swept clean away by any social 

 convulsion, our descendants, two thousand years hence, will 

 have as much difficulty in determining the origin of the Tur- 

 key, as we have in deciding upon that of the Cocks and Hens. 

 At a later point of time than that predestined for the disap- 

 pearance of the wild Turkey, but one equally inevitable, the 

 last surviving specimens of the Emeu and the Kangaroo will 

 be such as shall be reared in captivity, for the gratification of 

 the wealthy or the scientific. Man has the power of trampling 

 underfoot, and sweeping every living thing before him in his 

 progress; but in some cases, at least, he is likely, for his own 

 sake, to rescue the most valuable part of the spoil from de- 

 struction, if it will only submit to be rescued, and not refuse 

 to accept a continued existence on such conditions. A family 

 of savages would soon consume and destroy a whole province 

 full of wild Cocks and Hens, were it ever so well stocked; but 



