THE TURKEY. 365 



of America ? Such a plan would most likely be less trouble- 

 some than the task of taming fresh-caught birds or their 

 chicks. If this has ever been the case, it will be a curious 

 return for us to have made, of an enslaved race, to the conti- 

 nent to which we owe the original existence of the species 

 among us. Some slight notice of the Crested Turkey may be 

 expected in these pages, as Temminck (Pigeons et Gallinacesj 

 vol. ii. p. 387,) says that it is "only a variety or sport of nature 

 in the species; it only differs in that it has a crest of feathers, 

 sometimes black, sometimes white ; and these Crested Turkeys 

 are sufficiently rare. Mademoiselle Backer formerly kept, in 

 her magnificent menagerie, near the Hague, a flock of Turkeys 

 of a beautiful Isabelle yellow, approaching to chestnut; they 

 all had an ample crest of pure white." Albin, publishing in 

 1738, gives (vol. ii. p. 30) a coloured print of the white- 

 crested Turkey, and says, "This bird I saw in the possession 

 of Henry Cornellyson, Esq., beyond Chelmsford, in Essex: it 

 was of the bigness of the common Turkies, having a beautiful 

 large white copple on its crown or top of the head/' We 

 do not see such freaks of nature now; nor does a Turkey's 

 head, with its movable and erectable skin, look a likely place 

 for a plume of feathers to start from. Such a lusus has never 

 occurred in the great Turkey-breeding counties of Norfolk, 

 Suffolk, and Cambridgeshire, and the appearance of the 

 monster would be sure to be observed there, if it took place. 

 We therefore may suspect the Crested Turkey to be, like the 

 Crested Guinea Fowl, a distinct species, and that it has failed 

 to propagate, and so is no longer to be seen among us. The 

 suspicion is confirmed by finding in " Wild Life in the Interior 

 of Central America, by Greorge Byam, 43d Light Infantry," 

 at p. 154, and the following, an account of the discovery of 

 Crested Turkeys in a state of nature, which is too long to ex- 

 tract. But the subject is most perplexing, and interesting 

 from its very mystery. A solution may possibly be effected 



31* 



