194 TKANK forester's FIELD SPORTS. 



" Three or four are usually seen feeding together. The cubs 

 are remarkably small in proportion to the full-grown animal." — 

 United States Exploring Expedition, Lieutenant Wilkes. 



THE WILD TURKEY. 



MELEAGRIS GALLOPAVO. 



" This noble and beaiitiful bird, the origin, it appears to be 

 conceded, of our domestic Turkey, the pride, this of the forest, as 

 that of the poultry yard, is now, like its congener, the Pinnated 

 Grouse or Heath Hen, all but extinct in the Eastern and Middle 

 States of the Union. 



" A few of these noble birds, it is said, still exist in Vermont 

 and Maine ; Massachusetts unquestionably contains a few in 

 her mountainous inland counties. The north-eastern angle of 

 New-York also, in all probability, has not been entirely desert- 

 ed by this magnificent species of game, and I have reason to 

 believe that a single drove yet exists in the State of New-Jer- 

 sey among the wild ridges of the Musconetcong Hills, west of 

 the Greenwood Lake. From Pennsylvania westward, they be- 

 come more frequent, and in all the wooded portions of the 

 West to the Rocky Mountains, so far South as in the forest 

 ground of Texas, and Northward into Upper Canada, though 

 yearly becoming less abundant, they are still plentiful. They 

 are irregularly migratory in search of food, and irregularly gre- 

 garious. I have great doubts in my own mind whether they 

 breed eastward of the Pennsylvanian Alleghanies, it being 

 rather my opinion that the few birds of this once abundant spe- 

 cies which are now found in the eastern States, are mere strag- 

 glers from the southern extremity of the great Apalachian chain ; 

 it being worthy of remark, that it is solely along the line, or on 

 some of the offsetting spurs of that great mountain range that 

 they are found at present. 



For some inexplicable reason, Wilson has not described or 



